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A lot of early stage startups, we interact with, often ask us to find them CTOs. Most entrepreneurs in today’s Indian startup boom are smart guys with a fuzzy tech background, and forming an all-star tech startup team is vital to your success. Remember, great products don’t change the world – great teams do. Without further ado, here are the 5 people you absolutely need if you’re going all in.
Marketing Head
Right off the bat, you’ll need someone to create some buzz for you. A marketing head’s role would consist broadly of conquering the 19 traction channels (or whichever of those are relevant to you).
These channels are well defined in the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. They are:
- Viral Marketing
- PR
- Unconventional PR
- SEM
- Social & Display Ads
- Offline Ads
- SEO
- Content Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Engineering as Marketing
- Targeting Blogs
- Business Development
- Sales
- Affiliate Programs
- Existing Platforms
- Trade Shows
- Offline Events
- Speaking Engagements
- Community Building
Your lead marketing guy needs to figure out which of those channels are relevant to you right now and which ones to spend on, pay attention to, or ignore. For early stage startups, focus on PR, SEO, tapping into your social channels, and a little bit of SEM are important. However, the most important attributes of quality marketing folk is their ability to create communities. Creating communities is really hard, but it pays off in the long run.
Chief Technical Officer
Most tech startups outsource their tech. I can’t think of anything worse than this. Startups move blindingly fast and not having an internal tech team will ruin you, both financially and mentally. Invest in someone who’s either led tech before or can learn fast and knows how code works. It’s not really necessary for this person to code himself, but he/she needs to understand the essentials or you’ll be taken for a ride by everyone offering you solutions.
Product Head
Most startups combine the tech and product roles together. I’ve been working in this field for over 7 years and while this is okay when you’re a few weeks old, you’ll still need to bring on someone to do product. Tech teams are responsible for how something is implemented, but your product head decides what needs to be implemented. From understanding feedback from sales and marketing, to tuning the messaging, to user experience decisions, leave it to this guy. UI/UX designers make really great product heads.
Sales/Supply Head
Some startups don’t sell in the early days. Depending on the type of startup you’re building, this role could vary. If you’re building a restaurant review site, this could be the person who speaks to restaurant owners and scans their menus. If you’re running a cab service, this is the person who manages the cab supply and keeps the ratio of cabs:users healthy. Most startups need someone in a role like this. Luckily, this role requires the least experience. A pushy, determined individual will do wonders at this role.
CEO/Decision Maker/Fundraiser
Strong teams have strong leaders. There will usually be a lot of friction in a team that’s smart that have diverse roles. There’s got to be someone who accepts responsibility and where the buck stops. This person should ideally take on the mantle of CEO. Keeping the cash flowing (raising money), figuring out the business model, and keeping team culture sane are the CEO’s responsibility. Fund raising is fairly difficult for a first time CEO, especially if you’re not outright copying someone else’s business model. Remember that early stage funds are for you to figure out the problem, not to scale what you’ve already built.
With this team, determination, a year, and a bit of luck, you should be able to pull off absolutely anything. Good luck to you and do let me know about the great startups that you build!
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