Building Startup Ready Teams Date:   Friday , June 03, 2016 Headquartered in Singapore, Moglixis the online technology platform catering mainly to the B2B sector with a wide assortment of genuine industrial goods and products from top global and Indian brands. \"The secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world\" - Steve Jobs Hiring is one of the very well researched and well documented subjects in business. In many established organizations, there is a separate HR function that takes care of the recruitment process which is a robustly set and laid out procedure. They look primarily for a role fitment with the past experience of the candidate, and the latter is well aware of the career progression in the organization. In a startup organization, building the early stage team is a different ball game, with uniquely critical aspects attached to it. There is multitude of challenges that an entrepreneur faces starting from finding good talent with the limited available resources to sharing the vision to the potential hires, making the team go through the hardship of building a business out of scratch and so on so forth. While the challenges may appear to be manifestation of demand and supply, in reality it is more than that and has its own pit falls if not paid due attention to critical softer elements. While hard skills like technical knowledge, relevant experience are hygiene, the softer ones are recipe for a great organization in the making. Here are the top five elements that go a long way in building a great startup ready team. • Right Attitude: In a startup, more than anything, what matters most is the right attitude of the people. In an unstructured environment with scarce resources in hand, the initial team is expected to improvise with whatever it has. That also brings out the best of the team and harnesses a bond within which lasts longer. Research shows that the success of a startup depends on and is highly correlated to the duration the core team sticks together. • Managing Ambiguity: Most startups begin their entrepreneurial journey with a sketchy understanding of the process. It is about figuring out the right solution for a problem in hand than solving the problem itself. So it’s imperative for the entrepreneurs to look for people willing to manage this chaos/ambiguity than seeking ready answers for problems which at times even the founders may not be having. • Fungibility: In an entrepreneurial set up, people are expected to adapt to the need of business. Through the journey of a startup business model, the associated roles evolve over a period of time. It demands superlative professional fungibility as well as mental adaptability from the team to chip in and shoulder responsibility collectively. • Living The Dream: It is imperative for an entrepreneur to select people who believe in the dream that the former has envisioned and are completely sold on to. In an uncertain journey of building a large business, it takes a lot of passion and conviction to drive oneself as well as others around. The ability of the team to see, believe and live the dream acts as a catalyst to wither the ups and downs of a startup life. • Trust & Team Work: In a startup, trust within the core team acts as a binding force, and that breeds a culture of team work. During the evolution phase of the startup, a lot depends on the execution of the strategy/business model and how incredibly the team is complementing each other. It is imperative that the entrepreneur builds a team who are emotionally coherent and intellectually compatible to get into the groove of a performing team. The hard skills of a potential recruit get dwarfed on the face of the soft ones because it creates the culture and DNA which permeates through the organization in the years to come. An organization is nothing but an institution that provides a platform for the talented to excel, and the stakes are too high for entrepreneurs to give a cold shoulder to the fundamental building block which is the \'team\' behind it.