Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Developing a startup team

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–7 of 7 posts

Developing a startup team

#1

Post by tolu_olubode »

Hi, my name is Tolu and i'm 17. I'm working on a new website as a project/experiment into building a startup. I've always been interested in building fantastic products that users enjoy and love using. I'm currently underway in building an MVP with a team of 4 other people. The hope is that if the site really takes off we incorporate as a startup and if not well lesson learned and life moves on. However I do now see a real chance of this becoming something. Now my question is at my age its to expensive to get a full fledged developer or designer or whatnot, but its a lot harder to keep my team members who are friends and colleagues interested in the long run. How do I do keep them committed in the long run, eventually build a culture we can expand into a company culture and really build this?

P.s This is my first post, I really love just perusing this site. Any thoughts, advice and nuggets of wisdom is greatly appreciated

Re: Developing a startup team

#2

Post by mtmail »

So five people work on a project with the goal of earning money from it and incorporating in the future.

The others might be your best friends but my advise is to setup a contract first outlining exactly who owns what in that project. Even if you verbally agreed on 20% each there will come a situation where you argue that one person spent more on postage and the other spent more on legal fees or yet somebody else put twice the hours in as the next. Or you worked from somebody's living room (kind of an expense). At that point you will argue about percentages again so better to have it in writing as soon as possible. Source: been there, done that.

A contract also helps establishing that work created for the project belongs to the full team. E.g. nobody can go out and sell/reuse the domain or logo without the other people's permission.

To break the ice maybe just point to the movie 'the social network' (the one about the Facebook where the Winklevoss twins didn't set a contract).

Re: Developing a startup team

#3

Post by tolu_olubode »

mtmail wrote: post #2

So five people work on a project with the goal of earning money from it and incorporating in the future. The others might be your best friends but my advise is to setup a contract first outlining exactly who owns what in that project. Even if you verbally agreed on 20% each there will come a situation where you argue that one person spent more on postage and the other spent more on legal fees or yet somebody else put…

For some reason, I knew that movie would be referenced. But yeah that is sound advice. Thank you

Re: Developing a startup team

#4

Post by [deleted] »

mtmail wrote: post #2

So five people work on a project with the goal of earning money from it and incorporating in the future. The others might be your best friends but my advise is to setup a contract first outlining exactly who owns what in that project. Even if you verbally agreed on 20% each there will come a situation where you argue that one person spent more on postage and the other spent more on legal fees or yet somebody else put…

[deleted]

Re: Developing a startup team

#6

Post by tolu_olubode »

RaitoBezarius wrote: post #5

Currently, how your team is organized? Do you have at least a developer? Do you have a designer?

For all intents and purposes, I'm the CEO and lead developer. Everybody else is a developer. We are currently in the process of getting a designer. The main problem is getting one that is willing to just join the team for later equity, but this person would need to think long term.
Post reply on HN