Corey Dreckman

Pay Tribute To Those Who Have Gone Before

With Memorial Day fast approaching everyone is finalizing their plans for the upcoming holiday weekend. Discussions around the water cooler range from what type of meat their grilling to the big ‘sale’ at their favorite retail outlet. What’s not being discussed is what this weekend is really all about.

However one non-profit has not forgotten and that’s the Memorial Day Foundation. This small, Brooklyn, NY based foundation’s mission is to increase awareness and respect for Memorial Day through a public display of remembrance. That remembrance is placing bouquets on all the War Memorials in Washington, D.C. This beautiful and dignified “Thank You” floral bouquet pays tribute to those who fought and died for us. What a great way to honor these men and women!

So before taking part in this commercialized holiday, remember those who’ve gone before us and consider donating $15 for a bouquet to honor our nation’s war heroes.

Preserving Your Startup Culture

When you have a small and lean team the relationships and admiration for each other is inevitable. However when one of those team members is let go, what can be done to prevent it from destroying your startup culture?

Here are a few items to keep in mind:

1. Transparency: Be upfront with the rest of the team and let them know why the decision was made and be willing to answer the tough question of why?
2. Plan for moving forward: Communicate this to the rest of the team and let them know who’s going to support our clients, make the sales call, finish coding the product; although each is dependent upon the position you must have a plan to move forward and relay to them how bright the future looks!
3. Be Positive: The next few days at the office might seem weird without he/she around. Don’t let that effect the rest of the team. You must go out of your way to be upbeat and stay positive!!
4. Trust: Regardless of weather you agree with the decision or not, you must trust that the founder made the right decision for the company. If you do that you’ll be able to move forward quicker. If not then you might not have enough trust in your founder and you yourself may need to be looking for a position elsewhere.

The Right Ingredients

We had the conversation this week of why do angels and VC’s invest in certain companies. Although there are many reasons why (including product and market) the one that kept on surfacing was because of either the founder or the founding team members.

I first realized the importance of this several years ago after reading Howard Schultz’s book “Pour Your Heart Into It”. Howard chronicles the challenges of raising capital for ll Giornale and tells how their first outside investor was a physician who wasn’t sold on the idea of bringing the Italian coffee bar to America. However he did believe in Howard’s drive and vision which is why he invested $100,000 into the company and when II Giornale turned into Starbucks his return was $10 million after the IPO. You can have the best product in the world with a wide open market but if you don’t have the right team you’re going to fail.

I’ve experienced first hand both ends of the spectrum in my dealings with startups. I’ve been part of a company which had a great product and a wide open market however the team was not right and thus failed. I’m on the opposite end of that now and feel extremely fortunate to be part of a current startup team that from my perspective has all the right ingredients (product, niche market and the right founding team members).

Hire For Cultural Fit Over Competence

This is a great post by Brad Feld of Foundry Group about how to hire for your startup. Be sure to check out the video at the end of his post;

This first appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s Accelerator series last week under the title Cultural Fit Trumps Competence. Also, I’m going to be doing online office hours with the WSJ on Friday 12/21 at 3pm ET – join and ask questions!

The first people you hire in your startup are critical to your company’s success. So it’s easy to say that you need to hire the “absolute best people you can find.” But what does this actually mean?

Take two different spectrums – (1) competence and (2) cultural fit. Imagine that you have a spectrum for each person – from low to high.

Now, you obviously will not hire someone who is low on both competence and cultural fit. And you obviously will hire someone who is high on both competence and culture fit. But what about the other two cases?

Many people default into choosing people who have high competence but a low cultural fit. This is a deadly mistake in a startup, as this is exactly the wrong person to hire. While they may have great skills for the role you are looking for, the overhead of managing and integrating this person into your young team will be extremely difficult. This is especially true if they are in a leadership position, as they will hire other people who have a cultural fit with them, rather than with the organization, creating even more polarization within your young company.

In contrast, people with low competence but a high culture fit are also not great hires. But if they are “medium” competence, or high competence on in a related role, or early in the career and ambitious about learning new skills, they may be worth taking a risk on.

While you always want to shoot for high competence, high cultural fit people when you are hiring early in your company’s life, it’s always better to chose cultural fit over competence when you have to make a choice.

If you are interested in working with a company that is an expert at figuring this out, go take a look at RoundPegg.