The Startup Journey

Sara Tavel compares "Good" employees with "Rock Star" employees (whom she calls as the Mitochondria of the company) 1. Both are good at their jobs 2. The difference being in the  scale of adding value.  For good employees, it is is linear (more pay or higher the hierarchy = more value), while rockstar employees - "they add value to the company beyond their job description and responsibilities. They ask and do what is best for the company" The  "founder’s job (is) to attract and retain mitochondria through all stages of a company. At the early stages, this rare group of individuals is the core of the company. As your startup scales, they are your leaders." How do you spot them? - Do Value Interviews "Don't just hire for competence, interview for values" Typically the founding team should check if the candidate is going to be a match with the core values of the company. If you had a chart for that you'd want someon...

Derek Sivers has a great step-by-step guide: Go to the following sites to open an account at each: upwork.com, guru.com, freelancer.com ...You'll get many offers, but if they don't have your magic phrase at the top (“I AM REAL” or whatever), delete them. This is very hard to do, since you'll feel thrilled that so many people are offering to help, saying things like, “We have looked at your project and would be glad to complete it immediately,” but trust me and delete those. If they didn't read something marked as VERY IMPORTANT already, you don't want to work with them. ...Here's the real reason why you're stopping at a simple milestone: you're going to hire at least two different people to do this first step, expecting that one will go bad, one will be so-so, and one will be great. Yes it means you're paying multiple times for this first milestone, but it's worth it to find a good one. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture ...

From the wow post by Srikrishna of NEN ... Quadrant 4 – Don’t have the right attitude but are effective This is the hardest group to deal with. The obnoxious sales person my friend had to deal with, the supercilious technologist or rude finance guy we met all fall into this quadrant. Two things make it difficult to effect change with these folks - - they are deemed successful and have been rewarded in the past, despite their interpersonal shortcomings. - they are often positions deemed critical, that make change not just unpalatable but downright scary. “What’ll happen to my sales, if this guy leaves?” or “Will I find another trusthworthy finance guy?” ...Organizations suffer the most, because most of us don’t know how best to handle Quadrant 4 folks. The first step is to recognize not only the existence of these four quadrants but that people can move within the quadrants.  ...I’ve found talking about the four quadrants and even mutually agreeing with your ...

Was wowed by this powerful quote I'd heard yesterday: " You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. " (It's attributed to Jim Rohn .) It seemed to be much more powerful than the famous Silicon Valley mantra of " A Players hire A Players; B Players hire C Players ." Since for most working professionals (and especially so for entrepreneurs) almost all the 5 people (that we spend the most time with) are likely to be co-workers, why would we ever hire a "B Player" again? Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private company transactions, valuations and financials in India. Click Here to learn about Venture Intelligence products that help entrepreneurs Reach Out to Investors, Research Competition, Learn from Experienced Entrepreneurs and Interact with Peers. Includes the Free Deal Digest Weekly Newsletter: India's First & Most Exhausti...

From Mukund Mohan's post There are 3 primary parameters I have seen used when people hire folks to determine their salary. 1. Experience – usually measured in # of years working on relevant and related technologies. A rule of thumb I have seen is 1.2 to 1.5 times the number of years of experience + starting salary of a fresh graduate at 2L ($3K) per year to 6L ($10K) per year. For example, if you are looking to hire a developer with 5 years of experience, then you will pay 5 years times 1.2 plus 2L per year if you are a startup that’s not funded. 2. Type of technology – The more arcane the technology the more you can expect to pay for it. For example, you can expect to pay much less for a person who knows PHP and more for someone who knows Android app dev or Ruby on Rails. Some common technologies and your base times multiple is below. I am assuming php developer is the base at Rs. 1. All others are multiple of what you’d pay the php developer. I dont mean this to think of php...

Mukund Mohan of Microsoft Accelerator has a post suggesting that entrepreneurs set their expectation realistically on this front. The question I get asked by entrepreneurs a lot is what persona type should I hire? I see most entrepreneurs looking to hire that elusive work-work persona. There are so many Indian entrepreneurs, who claim to have a culture that attracts the work-work persona, and those folks that are passionate employees. I hate to tell them they are being fooled and really if I talked to their employees, they’d tell me they’d rather start their own company, but dont have the risk profile to do so. Here’s the real truth. The work-work folks will not be working for you in India. They would rather be entrepreneurs themselves, since they live their work. So the best you can do as an entrepreneurs is to hire a work-hobby or work-life persona. I’d highly recommend you dont get frustrated if they dont give you a 100%, because really their mind is elsewhere. As long as ...

Interesting take from Derek Flanzraich, Founder and CEO of Greatist,  in his Mixergy podcast : ... convincing people to work for very little money, or no money, is very hard, and if you convince them, it means they’re in it for something else. I love that. I love the idea that we were creating an online TV show at my university because people genuinely thought it was important that we do it. The students were learning how to run a camera, something they’d never done before, purely because they thought it was important that we poke and satirize the university. Here it’s no different, except the difference is it’s bigger and more meaningful. We want to help people think of health and wellness in a healthier way. When we interview people for new jobs, if they don’t believe extraordinarily, passionately in this vision of the future and want to have a hand in shaping it regardless of their experience, we don’t hire them. I got reminded about the amazing story of the ...

I was recently a guest at the Insead "India Business Dialogue" event at Bangalore. The event aimed to provide Insead grads - who are naturally mostly employed at large corporations - on starting up, attracting venture capital and, if the entrepreneurial plunge is too much of a risky leap, getting hired by a startup. If the grads thought getting hired by a startup sounded safer, they had anothing think coming. The last session (on joining a startup) had one representative each from a VC firm, a HR Services firm and a veteran entrepreneur. And here's a sample of what they had to say about startup hiring techniques: The Entrepreneur: One of my friends makes sure to pour coffee on the candidate and takes a call based on how the candidate reacts. The HR Person: We offer to send a cab for picking up the candidate. And we generally don't bother to. We - and out clients - like to see whether the candidate turns up late and cribs about the taxi or figures out an alter...

This article originally appeared in the Financial Express. Reporoduced with permission from the author. The young first time CEO looked and sounded pleased. He’d just made an offer to a candidate for his head of Human Resources and the candidate had accepted. After almost a year of searching for the appropriate candidate and after making do with sub-optimal stop gap solutions, it appeared that that search would come to an end. It had happened out of the blue. The CEO had been contemplating restructuring of his company for a while. This restructuring had been necessitated by the company’s rapid expansion into new geographies, addition of several new lines of business and increased complexity of a rapidly growing business. To help him understand and accomplish this, he wanted to take the advice and guidance of experienced industry professionals. He approached his board of directors and was accordingly introduced to several senior executives. Over the course of the past 18 months, he had ...

The CEO had been in conversation with several potential senior hires for his startup. At least 3 recruitment firms were on the job for him. Somehow the “right” candidate hadn’t yet crossed his radar. He was getting, quite naturally, frustrated. If a candidate had the right experience, he didn’t have the right attitude. If another had the right attitude, then the competency was deemed inadequate. If both attitude and competency seemed right, compensation became a stumbling block! Most companies, and especially, startups have an immensely challenging time finding the right talent. India has a large number of people, but a small number of appropriately qualified people. “Qualified” not by way of being able to brandish a degree, but in terms of having the right mix of experience, competencies, skills and attitude. Given that the India growth story is just unfolding across multiple sectors of the economy, it is natural that a critical mass of trained and experienced manpower has yet to emer...

I attended a presentation on entrepreneurship by Satya Prabhakar, Founder & CEO of Sulekha.com, on August 31 at an event organized by TiE-Chennai and the Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA). I found the points he made on hiring and retention quite interesting. He suggested entrepreneurs look out for "5Is" for hiring and 'three 4-letter words" for retention. The "5 Is" 1. Intellect 2. Initiative 3. Industry (ie, Hard work) 4. Integrity 5. Interpersonal Skills The 3 4-letter words: 1. Work (i.e., its content) 2. Love ("Am I valued and appreciated here?") 3. Hope ("Is this place enroute to something great?") Entrepreneurs should not allow an employee to settle into a comfort zone and keep setting the bar higher. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the Private Equity and Venture Capital ecosystem in India. Click here to learn abou...