How important should you treat your tech startup team?

Your tech startup team is as important as your startup itself, which implies that you have to employ the best hands possible because no matter how bad ass your idea is, they are the people who manage it, and when you experience poor management at an early stage into the startup, there might be no future for your startup at all.

Normally, if I want to recruit for my own startup, I’d not give credence to university degrees because for me, they are just formalities. Instead I’d tell applicants to send me a mail (not CVs) convincing me to hire them, while highlighting their skills and how they can visibly make an impact on my startup.

So, one of the most important agenda, which should be as important as launching the startup is the recruitment process, because trust me, you do not want to hire the wrong person for any role within your circle, and even after you must have finished hiring your most preferred people, there are things you need to do to get them moving, and productive. Things like:

Let them in on your startup goals

Please do not keep your tech startup team in the dark about what your startup goals are. Make them know exactly where the startup is headed, what you hope to achieve in a particular time frame, and how you hope to achieve it. When you do this, you have given them a template to work with and they’d share those goals knowing the exact path to follow.

Give them a flexible working condition

To maximize productivity, your tech startup team deserves a very flexible working condition. You don’t have to force them to work for long hours straight as they could become stressed out as a result. This drastically reduces how productive they could be.

Treat them like partners, not just employees (Make their opinion count)

Treating them as partners does not mean you have to give them the dividends meant for partners at the end of every quarter. It simply means that in some decisions that you need to make, you could ask for their opinion, and if it is a credible one, you make it count and give them credence for it. This would go a long way to improve their self confidence which would be of great help to your startup.

Your office space should be work friendly

To drive up creativeness and productivity in your tech startup team, you do need to have a very friendly work space. Very friendly in the light that it should encourage a reading culture – by having a mini library -, relaxation – by having a restaurant or game center -, Idea generation – by having a space where brainstorming takes place and ideas can be shared amongst employees and many more like it.

Please pay your tech startup team well

If everyone on your tech startup team do have a comfortable life devoid of hungry children at home, or unnecessary debt, I think this would reflect on your startup while it drives up productivity. You do not want your team to start worrying about their financial problems at home. You just have to pay them well (as well as you can afford) so they focus on taking your startup to greater heights. And as your startup progress in revenue and profits, it should reflect in their finances too.

Be approachable to them

Now, you do have to stop your ‘CEO’ or ‘founder’ title from getting in your head. If you want ideas to flow within your tech startup team circle, then you have to be approachable. Your team have to be able to confide in you. Who knows? Their ideas could be the next big thing for your startup.

Treating your tech startup team the right way could go a long way to instill the needed confidence in them, and by extension, give your startup the needed boost it needs to break into its respective market. Do not trade your team’s comfort for anything else.

What other things do you think you can inculcate while dealing with your team? Let us know in the comment box below.