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A Startup is its People

11:33 AM Sunday July 13, 2008

Tags:Entrepreneurship, Managing people

It's been a week since the disastrous site review. Now, I am on a train back home after a follow up at Shannon's house with him, the two college student developers (Steve and Rose), his four year-old, one year-old, and dog, Maggie.

Aside from the periodic distribution of raisins (four year-old) and blueberry diaper emergency (one year-old), it was one of the most enormous turnarounds I've ever seen. Not only have they fixed the bugs from last week, but, as I waited for NJ Transit I received an email notification of our first successful Jamseed transaction.

Admittedly, it was $3.00 from Rose's father to buy a song and a voice mail from Steve's band, Legitimate Business--and we still haven't quite figured out how to get the money from me to Steve (all $2.50 of his proceeds minus transaction costs). But it was a transaction and real money.

Why was it so much better? In a word: Shannon. I had been worried about the students lack of experience. But Shannon had picked right, and their intelligence outweighed their deficiencies. I had worried that we had gone far off track, but Shannon understood I needed a site I could show investors and explained what that meant to Steve and Rose (and suggested a bonus to help motivate). I worried that as I continued to refine the idea of Jamseed that all the changes would derail development, but Shannon not only kept up, he provided the conceptual glue that brought all the features and functions together.

Shannons are what every startup needs. People who go beyond doing a task (like Mickey Mouse's swarming broomstick brigade) to someone who adds, as they say at my day job at World Wide Wicket, "value." More specifically, while I worry about the customer, he focuses on teaching Steve and Rose to deliver.

What do you think? How important are the employees versus the "big idea" in a startup (or a big company)? Can projects be realized with enough specification by any developer or are people more important than process? Lastly, have you worked with a Shannon, and if so, what made them stand out for you?

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Comments

"How important are the employees versus the "big idea" in a startup (or a big company)?"

to me, the question really is how important is the execution versus the "big idea" in a startup?

I survived the long cat-tle drive (herding cats... get it? yeah, that's bad.) of raising money and starting a business based on what was by all accounts a great idea. I then survived watching that same brilliant business die a spectacular death a few years later. Idea and execution are both the most important...but at different times. You need the idea in the beginning and right before you get your funding. Once you get your funding the idea needs to take a backseat to execution until you're stable. After you're stable, idea and execution can become friends again-- the peanut butter to the other's jelly. And seriously, who doesn't like pb&j?

as to your more specific question about people vs. idea, OK GO sums it up nicely: "mediocre people do exceptional things all the time"

- Posted by seth gray 
July 18, 2008 9:53 AM

Vision, people, management and objectives make a successful start-up.

- Posted by Ajay Hayer 
July 30, 2008 7:19 PM

A big idea is not much without passionate and dedicated people who beleive in it.

- Posted by Ajay Haye 
July 30, 2008 7:23 PM

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David Silverman

David Silverman is the author of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars (Soft Skull Press, 2007). He has worked at brand-new start-ups, Fortune 500 companies, and a few places in between. A business writing teacher, he grapples with the way we use words at work—to make it easier for the rest of us. If you have questions about how to manage a problem at work related to communication, please contact David at dsilverman [at] harvardbusiness [dot] org.

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