What I Looked For In Teammates

Recruiting a rockstar venture design team (Part C): Selection Let’s chat over Hangout. You are awesome. Now, want to go build a venture with me? I have to admit — I initially felt strange conducting a formal, multi-round interview process for this project. I thought, ‘This isn’t a formal job or a paying position I’m offering. Am I overdoing this?’ But the fact was that more people were expressing interest than I had anticipated, and coordinating multiple startup studio teams wasn’t an option. And given the countless people-related issues in startups I’d seen and heard about, I decided to just double down on the process. If someone got turned off by the rigor of the team formation approach, they likely wouldn’t be the right fit for the project anyway. Overall, my goal was to build a team that isn’t just a congregation of individual superstars but is outstanding as a group. To start, I defined 10 key selection criteria. First and foremost, it was paramount that the team is aligned in terms of motivation and interest. Beyond that, I sought “T-shaped” teammates with a strong generalist set of capabilities plus exceptional spikes in particular areas. Motivation and interest Shared values around impact: those who seemed motivated primarily by building a large market cap rather than by solving a meaningful problem were screened out immediately Commitment: demonstrated ability and excitement to commit the necessary time and mindshare to the project Flexibility in project direction: not married to a specific sector, population, or technology; willing to allow the team’s research/discussions to guide our focus on the most severe pain points and the largest opportunity areas Capabilities, personality, and experiences Emotional intelligence: in tune with emotional cues, intuitively gets interpersonal dynamics, quickly builds trust with others; high emotional intelligence is critical not only to create a “psychologically safe,” high-functioning team environment (I recommend this interesting article on the importance of psychological safety in a high-performing team) but also to drive the empathic design process Bias to action: willing to roll up their sleeves, dive into the details, and execute/build Humble confidence: excited to learn from teammates but comfortable asserting their viewpoint, especially in their domain of expertise Intellectual horsepower: strong problem-solving chops and potential to learn quickly Content/skill expertise: exceptional thought leadership in their core content/skill area (e.g., hipster, hacker, hustler, hound; given my hustler and hound skills, I particularly focused on teammates with hipster and hacker skills) Versatility: able to switch back and forth between divergent and convergent modes of thinking Life experience: brings in differentiated life experiences so that the team collectively can detect more patterns among collected stories during our research phase Note: In terms of content/skill expertise, for Beantown Startup Studio specifically, I looked for the following: Hipster: emphasis on intrinsic creativity + experience with the human-centered design approach + ability to lead rapid front-end prototyping using tools such as InVision (less emphasis on particular UX/UI design skills) Hacker: CTO-like profile that has a broad experience in tech and can bring a strategic tech lens to the team (i.e., think through applicable tech solutions and the boundary of feasibility for various venture concepts; I was less interested in younger software engineers who might be good in executing on very specific platforms but less experienced in thinking at a high level) + ability and willingness to quickly hack together early prototypes Hustler: adept at market sizing, conceptualizing and iteratively building out innovative business models via rapid hypothesis testing with customers Hound: able to conduct deep ethnographic research while incorporating macro-level secondary research insights Selection process overview 1. Application review Review submitted applications and prepare specific questions for each applicant (e.g., for applicants who were newly arriving in Cambridge for a master’s program in the Fall, I asked whether they would want to commit to a substantial side project before exploring all other possible school activities). 2. Motivation and interest assessment Initial conversation to understand their backgrounds, motivation, and interest as well as gauge personality fit. Key questions asked included the following What piqued your interest in this project? This is a serious project that requires 20+ hours/week of work. What other priorities do you have? You seem very interested in X and Y (sectors, technology verticals, etc.). Can you talk a bit more about why you are interested in those? Are you committed to continuing to work on those interests? Would you categorize yourself as a business person, designer, an engineer/builder, or a wild card? Why? Can you tell me about any prior startup and/or new product/service development experience? Customized question around their areas of expertise 3A. Problem solving case (with business/product experts) The purpose of this interview was to see whether business/product applicants could structure an ambiguous prompt, hypothesize the underlying problems, think of creative business solutions to address the those problems, and conceptualize a business model for one of the solutions. I used the following case: How can we reduce the racial tension that is quickly escalating in the US? Brainstorm business solutions to address the problems you have identified. Identify key business drivers for one of those solutions. 3B. Ideation case (with technical experts) The purpose of this interview was to see whether technical applicants, who tend to have a very logical, deductive way of thinking, can engage in expansive thinking and show business intuition. I used the following case: If our human-centered design process focused on the job-seeking US college student population and yielded the following 5 insights, what are some possible business ideas? Insight #1: The job search process in college is ambiguous and scary, and students receive little practical guidance. Students see job search process as throwing themselves into industries and they don’t really understand — to be evaluated through an interview process they also don’t understand. Students are also insecure about what skills they can bring to companies, adding to their fear of the recruiting process. Insight #2: To students, many companies look the same. Beyond the super elite firms and firms that regularly recruit on their campus, students cannot discern differences in the quality of employers. Insight #3: External factors largely drive students’ decisions. Many students don’t know what they want, and their decisions are largely driven by external factors (prestige, pay, or geography). Only few make decisions looking internally to find jobs that align with their values and mission. Insight #4: Employers and schools don’t speak to one another. Schools lack understanding of the needs of the employers and fail to equip students with necessary skill sets — and even when they do, move slowly to develop skills to serve those needs. Insight #5: True talent doesn’t translate to job offers. Students feel that the current recruiting practices don’t allow them to showcase their true potential because the processes over-indexes on things like GPA that doesn’t necessarily translate to job performance. 3C. Portfolio review (with design experts) With designers, I reviewed their portfolio, specifically looking for 4 things: Ethnography: Does the designer have experience doing substantive human-centered research — drawing out and synthesizing bottom-up insights? Versatility: Does the designer have experience looking at a wide range of systems-level problems and developing a diverse portfolio of solutions (both product and service)? Quality of work: How impressive are the solutions they’ve developed? Prototyping: Would they be able to lead rapid prototyping — particularly tech interfaces? 4. Acumen+IDEO prototyping group workshops (“final round”) We were lucky that Acumen+IDEO launched a free online course on prototyping involving multiple DIY group workshops. I took advantage of this and got everyone together to work through the first 2 sessions of the course (3 hours per session, so 6 hours total). Here, I looked for the following: Quality and diversity of ideas/insights: What differentiated perspective does one bring to the table? Who is truly user-centric? Who shows exceptional creativity? Who is exceptionally good at picking out the key business implications of a certain solution? Bias to action: How much willingness does each person show in getting down to create? Is someone too much of a “verbal strategist”? Team dynamic: Who naturally builds on others’ ideas? Who disrupts the constructive dynamic with unnecessary negativity? Picture from one of our group workshopsAfter the 2 group workshops, the Core Team was finalized at last! My takeaways from the recruiting efforts Be transparent at all times. People invested their valuable time to express interest in the project. It was important to show respect by being fully transparent about the process. Because of this, people were very understanding even though the process was much more drawn out than how side project groups are typically formed. Communicate in a timely manner. I made sure to get back to applicants within 24 hours of their filling out the application form. And in every conversation, I stated when I would get back to them by and made sure to meet that promise — whether the answer was a yes or a no. Lean on the selection criteria to drive consistency in decisions. I had several instances when I felt torn on somebody even though their skill sets and experiences weren’t the right fit simply because they were friendly. Having a clear selection criteria forced me to think objectively and make decisions better and faster. Look for true intrinsics beneath the resume credentials. I have had numerous encounters where my expectation formed based on credentials completely missed reality. I met amazing people without any “brand names” on their resume and people with amazing credentials who would have been a terrible fit. Similarly, I ran into business people with more creativity than designers and designers with very rigid thinking. Group work is a powerful final screen. Our group workshops really helped me compare each person’s contribution to the group’s thinking and interpersonal dynamic. Afterwards, I could finalize the team with confidence. I had a strong ingoing hypothesis of the final team makeup, and the workshops changed my mind. Pay attention to signals outside of direct interactions. Auxiliary information/behaviors can give you a lot of clues around a person. Looking at how people filled out the application form (length of responses, diction) + online profiles gave me a pretty good sense of what they would be like as a person (e.g., our designer, Aceil, wrote the most unique, prose-like introduction of herself, and I could just see that her mind works differently than mine). In addition, people’s email responsiveness and punctuality to calls were a big indicator of how interested/committed they were.