Being a Leader and Building a Great Team

What is the difference between and entrepreneur and a leader? Leadership: The process of influencing and inspiring others to want to achieve something Effective Leaders: Motivate- Set an Example Empower- Respect Others Enable- Communicate Know how and when to change

Building the New Venture Team Skills Needed in Start-Up Marketing Financial/accounting Managerial (day-to-day tasks) Customer service Product development Stakeholder management

Assessing Your Need for Other Team Members First, assess yourself and your business What areas do your strengths lie within? What tasks will your business need in the first month, in an average week? What tasks will your business need in the sixth month, in an average week? How many hours do you feel those tasks will take to accomplish? Other team members will have to be brought on to achieve tasks.

Ways to Bring on Other Team Members Profit/ownership-sharing agreements Hiring as employees Contracting out pieces for hire

Putting a Team Together at Emotiv Part I: Tan Le and Nam Do Le - Young Australian of the Year, came from refugee background, lawyer at 22 Do – Business and IT student interested in high-tech entrepreneurship Both had just sold their first company for millions Part II: Allan Snyder Marconi prize-winning scientist interested in emotional signal processing Part III: Neil Weste Australian chip designer who sold his company to Cisco for several billion dollars

Filling Operational Positions Finding great employees is hard! Unemployment greatly affects ease of finding great employees Low unemployment: hard to find great talent High unemployment: easier to find great talent The retiring of baby boomers is causing a vacuum of skilled workers Employees are skeptical of entrepreneurial ventures, and with good reason! Making a bad hire can cost 2.5 times an employee’s salary in lost customers, waste, and new recruiting to replace them.

Filling Operational Positions Go from the inside out Current employees Current employees’ friends and family Guerilla hiring programs that really stand out Contests, Internet campaigns Relationships with high schools and colleges

Before You Hire… Know what you want the person to do Job analysis, job description Figure out what kind of person would best fill that job Job specification Personality profile Figure out how you can create a simulation to know how well a candidate would fit the job.

Company Culture Behavior, values, attitudes, style Setting standards can help create culture. Behaving the way you want employees to behave sets culture. Culture dictates how things will be done in your absence.

Making the Job Great for Employees Make jobs flexible Flex hours, job sharing, telecommuting Establish a reward system Fair wages, then pay-for-performance on top Non-monetary rewards Stock options

Keeping Your Business Going Succession Plan Know who will take your place Groom them Make a kit so that others can take over immediately Strategic plan Up-to-date financials Mistakes and lessons learned List of suppliers and relationships and how they work How you run the business from day to day Estate plan

Getting Out! Always, always, always have an exit plan. Imagine yourself in the worst position you can think about, and ensure that you are covered. Options: Selling for cash plus a note Leveraged buyouts by management and employees Employee stock ownership plans