Imagine your favourite football team…with a twist.Â
What if all of them are excellent defenders or fantastic strikers?
Each has similar skillsets without the synergy of complementary skills. How will their performance be like? Probably an unsustainable partnership doomed for disaster.Â
Now, let’s put things in perspective when it comes to building an early stage startup. Entrepreneurship is truly a team sport!Â
A founding team with the right chemistry, individual knowledge, experience, and complementary skillsets is essential to grow your idea. So, who would you ideally have on your startup dream team?Â
Rei Inamoto, the founding partner of Inamoto & Co., has shared that your startup, especially in the tech business, requires three clear and definitive personalities to succeed. The three personalities—hacker, hipster, and hustler—have complementary skillsets to help build your business.Â
Let’s take a closer look at these three personalities:
Hacker
A developer who can put ideas into practice quickly
The hacker is the tech person who creates the algorithms, intellectual property, and resulting technology that form the building blocks of your startup.The hacker is the back-end, front- end or even the full stack developer who eats, sleep and breathes coding. Usually, also the chief technology officer, the hacker is instrumental in choosing the coding environment and platform for the start-up to sustain growth. As a bonus, if he or she can hustle—that is, get out and talk with customers—you’ve got it made.
Bill Gates is the ultimate hacker. His windows of opportunity opened at the age of 13, when he first got introduced to computers. The hacker in him co-founded Microsoft, together with his childhood friend, Paul Allen.
Hipster
Hipsters know the trends and are the people everyone loves.
Hipsters are the designers who make sure the product delivers the best customer experience. They set best practices in marketing, brand identity building, user experience (UX), and the look and feel of the product. In most early-stage startups, the hipster is also a copywriter. Elon Musk is a hipster, who came up with the Tesla EV.
Hustler
A hustler is the driving force behind the startup and bringing the idea forward.
He or she is the chief salesperson who establishes proper interpersonal contacts in order to facilitate business development and project management. Hustlers assembles a high-performing team, fueling their passion, overseeing project execution, refining the business model, establishing strategic partnerships, and steering the team throughout the journey while fostering and fortifying its organizational culture. From Dr. Norilmi Ismail of SpaceIn, Hazim Azhar of Carpedia to Rejina Rahim of Wahine Capital, they are all ideal hustlers that are part of our portfolio investments.Â
When a hacker, hipster and hustler come together in harmony, they often turbocharge growth, success and longevity. Plus, it is great for investors too, as a solid founding team weighs heavily when it comes to funding your startup. This is because investors know that even the best idea stands to fail in the absence of a solid founding team.
The question now is, are you keen on learning how to build your team’s profile?
Then sign up for Alpha Startupsâ„¢ Online today. This is a self-paced online course, similar to a pre-accelerator programme, designed to move start-ups from zero to one. Click here to get started today, https://1337.ventures/asda/
Good luck with your journey!
