Entrepreneurs may be confident, but they can’t do everything – so it’s important they surround themselves with the right people
Self-confidence is a required ingredient for successful entrepreneurship. By their very nature, entrepreneurs must have a strong belief in themselves and their ideas in order to sell their new venture to investors, customers, team members and the world. Their ability to get others on board is dependent in large part on their own belief in themselves and their sincerity and authenticity in convincing others to join their movement.
A healthy dose of self-confidence is also required of entrepreneurs to weather the expected and unexpected storms of launching and growing a new business. The path of a new venture is filled with many challenges that require a steady hand from a leader who can inspire others to push onward despite the headwinds of disgruntled investors, lost customers or cash shortages.
For those reasons and others, entrepreneurs must possess a solid confidence in themselves and the new venture they are creating if they hope to succeed. However, the most successful entrepreneurs also have a strong sense of self-awareness that allows them to see their limitations – or, heaven forbid, personal weaknesses – and to realize the importance of surrounding themselves with other highly skilled, confident people.
For instance, some entrepreneurs are highly skilled at business development and sales but are lacking in operations management experience. Others may be gifted innovators in the laboratory but lack the strategic business skills needed to turn new products into successful businesses. Regardless of the startup, no entrepreneur brings the full basket of capabilities, connections and passions to make a venture successful. Thus it is critically important to build a diverse, highly functional team to move the company’s vision forward.
Fortunately, entrepreneurs have several options for building a stronger skill base beyond their own for their companies’ leadership.
Form the right founder team
First, they can select complementary cofounders from the very beginning. Too often we see inventors of new products launching ventures without any experience or training in starting and running a business. They fail to recognize the inherent difference between designing and creating an amazing new product and turning that product into a profitable, going business concern. Consequently, they believe they can go it alone.
However, rarely does it work out that a technically gifted inventor is also a savvy business leader. Many new ventures fail as a result.
Today, more and more entrepreneurs are realizing the importance of forming founder teams that bring all the skills and experience necessary to succeed to the new venture before it launches. Inventors and visionaries are teaming up with skilled business talent to launch new ventures that are not only technically innovative, but operationally and financially sound.
Locally, a great example of complementary cofounders is the team of Frank Greer and Ralph Heredia, CEO and VP of business development, respectively, for Zipit Wireless. Though both Greer and Heredia have backgrounds in engineering with several patents to their names, they bring different core competencies to the growing team at Zipit.
As CEO, Greer’s skills in strategic planning and organizational management play a critical role in his responsibilities managing and directing the company’s overall operations. Heredia, conversely, leverages his capabilities in innovation, research and external relationships to lead the company’s business development and marketing functions. Bringing both of these skill sets together at the company’s founding has allowed Zipit to secure significant venture capital investment since its founding and to establish itself as the industry leader in two-way critical messaging systems.
Focus on first hires
Entrepreneurs can also build a complementary skills set around them by hiring key team members during the formative years. After choosing the right cofounders, nothing is more important to a startup’s future than the first hires it makes for its early leadership team positions. Top-performing entrepreneurs ensure that their first hires are their best and that the new additions bring important capabilities that offset their skill and experience gaps.
A great example of an entrepreneur doing this locally is Michael Bolick with Selah Genomics. As CEO of Selah, Bolick began carefully building his leadership team in a way that maximized the cumulative capability of the group. With his background in pharmaceutical business management, Bolick recognized the importance of adding to his abilities a leadership team with strong capabilities in operations and research.
To that end, he added operations expertise with the hiring of Ken Morgan, VP of operations; and world-class research experience with the addition of Jeremy Stuart, VP of genomics services. Under the diverse capabilities of this leadership team, Selah has experienced strong sales growth in recent years and was acquired in 2014 by EKF Diagnostics, a public traded company in the U.K.
Seek strategic investors
Entrepreneurs can also acquire additional functional skills and strategic connections through their investors. Though investors are often thought of only for the funds they bring to a company’s balance sheet, they also can bring complementary skills and experience as well as important contacts that can significantly impact a company’s future. The wisest entrepreneurs seek out strategic investors who not only bring needed cash to the business but also other capabilities that help round out their companies’ leadership skills.
Like fitting together a puzzle, entrepreneurs today are tasked with building a set of highly complementary skills and abilities that will allow their ventures to grow and succeed in today’s hyper-competitive global market. Doing so requires the courage to objectively assess their own personal skill gaps and the wisdom to seek out cofounders, team members and investors that fill those needs. Ironically, it’s only the most confident entrepreneurs who are willing to admit they need others to be successful.
