How to Find and Build a Team for Your Company.

I’ve been part of numerous startups as an entrepreneur. Some as a solo entrepreneur and many where I have helped assemble a team. Most have failed, and have included the following:

1. My Lawyer Online – We created an MVP to go to market that was built as a dashboard to help communicate and organize legal documents. Let’s say the MVP never went to market.

2. My Fitness Pal – I outsourced an app that went to market in the apple store. You were able to choose your specific trainer and exercises and time them out while you were doing other types of cardio. I think it had like 100 downloads for $1.99. Big in South Arabia though!

3. EP Fitness 1.0 – Built a marketplace where you could find fitness trainers on-demand. I think I blew that $15K loan in about 3 months.

But, along the way I have learned how to be a Founder and the importance of assembling a great team. This was done successfully with Excel Performance, EP Fitness 2.0, EP Health and now Company Finder.

Unlike Company Finder where most of our founding team are all based in Vancouver, that does not always have to be the case. Only one of our founding team that is not based in Vancouver is our CTO Emanuel who is in Romania.

In EP Health’s case, we were spread out in Connecticut, Boston, Kelowna and Vancouver. Along the way we also had members in Maine and Chicago. We even participated in an accelerator in Vancouver, where I was the only member that was able to attend. We recruited our team primarily on AngelList and through lots of trial and error were able to assemble a stellar and talented squad.

The big takeaway is to know your talents and delegate your weaknesses. Project management and accountability becomes important in gauging your team’s progress in a remote work-force. The last thing you want to do is spend all night doing your company's bookkeeping or branding your logo.

For example, our team at Company Finder currently has 7 students working for us thanks to Venture Canada. Our CMO project manages them, and this greatly helps our progress to fill all the small gaps to grow and scale effectively. These tasks include things such as: SEO, Social Media growth, Keyword searches, content management, etc.

“Figure out what type of CEO you are and make sure your skill sets can offset the team you assemble. “

Are you looking for some basic tools to get you started? Let us know here and we can help.

Best,

Angus Burke

CEO of Company Finder