Ok, I know this post and its title seems like the most obvious thing in the world.
But empirically, I can tell you it isn’t. Over the past years writing SaaStr, I’ve met with friends/colleagues/partners/ex-customers who are total rockstars and working on starting a company. (Yes, I know that’s an overused term).
As individuals, they are amazing.
But what they don’t have is a good enough founding team:
- Sometimes, if the prospective founder isn’t super technical, then the CTO/VPE isn’t really great. They’ve got a rent-a-CTO.
- Or if the founder is technical, and it’s SaaS, they just don’t quite have enough business and domain expertise on the team to really figure it out from a customer side (interviews, getting on a plane, proto-sales, market sizing and segmentation, etc.).
- Or sometimes they are great, but the team members are just not great enough for their new C-level roles (CEO, CTO, CMO, CSO, CBO, C?O).
Yes, I know statistically, the odds are against you when you do a start-up. I also concede that markets are just as important as teams. But great teams find great markets, so that doesn’t really matter.
But.
Personally, I don’t know of a single rockstar founding team that didn’t somehow, someway, scrape out at least a single. At least an acqui-hire. At least a soft landing, or a pay-everyone-back M&A. I know there are plenty of contraexamples, but in my network, all of the great teams find a way to make something of their start-ups. Sometimes a home run, sometimes a double. At least a single. But basically, no one that is great, but without a great team, did. A few, but they almost died doing it.
I guess here’s my point to my friends and colleagues anxious to do a start-up. I hear you. And Yes, you are Great. But Wait. Wait until you have a Great Team, a Truly Great Team. Even if this specific opportunity passes you by. Even if it takes 18 months. And if your Team is Almost Great — this is the hardest one — you should still Take a Pause.
I’m not saying your team has to be 100% complete before you write a line of code. Of course, that’s impossible. But you have to have the rockstar team it takes you to get to reality, to pre-traction, on Day 1.
If not, focus on team building. You’ll somehow come up with another idea, another vision.
(note: an updated SaaStr Classic post)
