By Frank Addante
The first few weeks of starting my newest company (Startup 6.0: the Rubicon Project) have reminded me of how critical it is to have the right team. I have been absolutely amazed by what an A++ team can produce in short periods of time. It has reaffirmed every thought I have ever had about my philosophy that great companies are built by great people.
To me, bringing together the right team has always been a product of trusting my instincts and my initial gut on people. So, I decided to spend some time trying to document what it is that I look for.
Here is what I came up with:
1. Trust
If you can't trust someone 100%, don't bring them on to your team. Period. If you do trust them, support them 100%.
2. Winners
Once someone has had a taste of success, they can never shake it. No one wants to do something less than their last win. So, those who have been part of a winning company have set the bar and anything less than exceeding that bar, in their mind, is failure.
3. Fire in the Belly
Hire people with an insatiable appetite for getting things done. You can generally tell who these people are because they can't sit still in their seats.
4. Good Athletes (versus Good Resumes)
Things are constantly evolving at a startup. It's more important to hire quick learners that can adapt versus deep experience. Smart people figure things out and will help evolve the business. Plus, they bring a fresh perspective.
5. No Egos
Strong egos will kill the culture of an early stage company. They will bring out the negative egos in everyone. Kill it fast, otherwise it will spread like a contagious, mutating disease. All for all and none for one.
6. Active Communicators
Communication is contagious. The more "in the flow" communication, the better.
Case in point: Our team at the Rubicon Project communicates so efficiently that our weekly team meetings have been averaging only about 40 minutes (covering all areas of the business).
7. Diversity
While it is good to have like minded individuals, it is equally important to balance that with people who have different perspectives and points of view.
8. Entrepreneurs
People who are driven to build something, will. Don't be afraid to hire people with high ambitions to start their own company. These people will be your best leaders.
See my previous posting: "Hire Entrepreneurs!"
9. Hard Working
Speed is one of the core strengths of an early stage company. Hard working people that are committed to winning will spend the extra time to learn. It allows them (and the company) to make more mistakes (on the path to finding the right answer).
10. Pride
You can't teach people to take pride in their work, so find people that do. Pride trumps all other motivators to do a superb job.
11. Purpose Driven - Focused on Results, Not Methods
All too often, people focus too much on the methods and not enough on the results. Find people that are driven by the results and are bored by the methods.
Warning: Stay away from people who talk about things like planning and architecture before they talk about purpose (the end goal). The most productive people start every plan by clearly stating the purpose first.
To me, these are the minimum requirements; all are required without exception. This is not a case where 10 out of 11 is good enough.
Another thing to note, is when bringing a founding team together, ensure that you all share the same criteria and values in people. Great people attract more great people. I have seen this first hand here at the Rubicon Project. Craig, Julie and Duc (my co-founders) have set the bar high, and as a result, our first 5 hires have been A++ quality. They sacrifice nothing. We've been very fortunate to have received a flood of outstanding resumes for our open positions. With so much great talent available, and only one slot to fill per position, it really forces you to be disciplined in evaluating the intangibles in my list above. It requires discipline in hiring, focus and trust in your team's gut to bring in the right people.
PS - We're planning our first event at the Rubicon Project (scheduled for August 9). This will be the first of a series of industry networking events that we'll be hosting. If you are interested in receiving an invite, please sign-up at http://www.RubiconProject.com/events.html
By Frank Addante
(Part 4 of a 5 part series: "So, you need to develop a product?")
Any entrepreneur, CEO or CTO should always have a development SWAT team on hand. This team should be outside of the core development team and outside of the company's critical path. This team can be made up of employees, a virtual group of employees (borrowed from their core team/job) or an outside development shop. It doesn't matter as long as they are super "scrappy" (see Scrappy versus Steady), have great vision, move extremely fast and require little direction or management.
I have had to call on my SWAT teams many times in the past. Sometimes in emergency situations, and other times to take advantage of market opportunities that quickly arise. Sometimes I have had to trash what they produced, other times it became a major turning point in a company's growth.
At L90 (Startup 3.0), we were sued by DoubleClick on the eve of our IPO for alleged patent-infrindgement. They tried to sue us in Virginia. We were scheduled to launch a new data center (of over 300+ servers) in Virginia the following week. With hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value at stake, I had to call on my SWAT team to do two things. First, they needed to reroute millions of dollars in computing equipment from Virginia to Texas and setup a new datacenter in less than 2 weeks. And second, they needed to architect and deploy an alternative to our core ad-serving software (which was delivering billions of ads for the Internet's top web sites at the time), because DoubleClick was trying to get an injunction to shut us down. The SWAT team was able to pull-off both of these seemlingly-impossible objectives within weeks and it gave us a lot of leverage in settling the bogus lawsuit in our favor.
At StrongMail (Startup 5.0), in the beginning, our biggest selling challenge was that it was difficult for us to visually demonstrate the value of our infrastructure solution. We had developed the world's best engine, but it didn't have a steering wheel (our strategy was to rely on other companies' steering wheels). Our internal development team was busy focused on developing our core product, but I needed to develop an application with an attractive, easy to use web user interface. I called on one of my outside SWAT teams and within months they were able to create an application on top of the StrongMail infrastructure that made it easy to demonstrate the value of the core infrastructure and it made the selling process magnitudes easier. It turned out to be a catapult for the company, and sales have been booming since then. The application is now being used by some of the world's most successful companies. After the initial product was developed, it was folded back into our internal engineering team and became part of our core product offering.
Without having a SWAT team on hand, it could have taken 10X as long to build a team, product specs, an architecture and a roadmap. The SWAT team helped us kick-start the project and get it to market in less time that it would have taken us to interview and hire a small team.
A solid SWAT team is invaluable, and to me, it is essential.
Next... Outsourcing (Part 5 of a 5 part series: "So, you need to develop a product?")
By Frank Addante
(Part 3 of a 5 part series: "So, you need to develop a product?")
Good engineers are hard to find. In today's highly competitive job marketplace, it is becoming increasingly more difficult. My solution: cast a wider net. Focus on the best talent, regardless of their location.
I've built development teams in Chicago, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and India. I've also hired engineers scattered in random locations around the world. I've built companies and teams where 100% of the development team was located at the company headquarters and other companies where none of the developers were at headquarters. I've realized that it doesn't really matter where they are, if they are the right people. There are many pros and cons to having your engineering team outside of the company headquarters (and/or in multiple locations), but I think the pros end up balancing out the cons. The main benefit to having your engineering team all in one place, at the company headquarters, is certainly communication. The con is that the developers can become 'tainted' or distracted by all the other business happenings and it can skew their thinking and creativity.
There are also geographical workforce talent pool advantages and disadvantages. Chicago was the easiest place to find engineers; they were cost efficient, hard working and very loyal. Los Angeles was a bit more difficult to find engineers; they were the most creative but more expensive than Chicago. Silicon Valley has a lot of engineers with a lot of experience, but also lot of competition, which makes it the most expensive place to hire engineers and loyalty can be a challenge. I will talk more about outsourcing in point #5, but India has terrific intellectual capital, is less expensive (however, costs have been quickly rising), but, it is very difficult to find "Scrappy" engineers (see point #1) and communication can also be a challenge.
At StrongMail Systems (Startup 5.0), our first three developers were in India. It was a challenge in the beginning, but ultimately, I attribute much of our success to making the model work. We started with three extremely talented, creative and innovative engineers. They were able to attract other talented engineers in India as we grew. There were many communication challenges in the beginning, but once we overcame them, we were able to leverage a full 24 hour development cycle between the U.S. and India and, as a result, we were able to develop product much faster than the competition. At L90 (Startup 3.0), our engineering team was based primarily in Chicago while our headquarters was in Los Angeles. As we evolved our business plan and tweaked our marketing messaging, our engineering team was shielded from a lot of the distraction (being in a different location, they didn't get sucked into the "water cooler" conversation or hallway chatter) and they always remained 100% focused on building innovative products driven by customer need. Of all of my companies, communication was probably the strongest at L90, even though the engineering and design team were completely separated from sales, marketing, business development and customer service.
Focus on the best people, not the best location... By casting a wider net, you can find better talent, better manage your costs and gain many other tangible and intangible benefits (e.g. loyalty, development and support expanded across multiple time zones, multiple geographical talent pools for growth, new and fresh perspectives, etc.) Fortunately, we live in a world where virtual locations are not only possible, but advantageous.
Next... Build a SWAT team (Part 4 of a 5 part series: "So, you need to develop a product?")
