Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

Building Your Entrepreneurial Team

Success of a venture depends on feasibility – not just the idea itself, but the people. Building your entrepreneurial team is important when starting a venture. The Butler Venture Accelerator recently held a lunch and learn session on this topic as part of its Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Building Your Entrepreneurial Team
During this lunch and learn session, the process of analyzing the management team during new business creation was explained. The session was very interactive and the majority of the attendees were able to share and learn from each other’s business ideas and experience. Attendees were asked to rate the following criteria that might be a benefit or a challenge for the owner of the business, depending on the business idea. The criteria are: passion for the business, prior entrepreneurial experience, industry experience, depth of professional and social networks, creativity, and level of education /advanced education. The other criteria that the student attendees added are technical skills, people skills, communication skills, and sales skills.

Some of the questions that founders need to consider when forming teams are: What is your organizational structure at the moment, if you have one? What is the structure that you envision for your company? Who are the key roles in an organization and what will they do (directors/leaders, managers, project managers, administrators, etc.)? Who is missing on your management team? Can you outsource some missing resources like accounting, sales, operations, and legal advisors? Who will be on your advisory board?

Creating an entrepreneurial founding team is a customized process. The number and the roles of people on the team depends on the type of business that the owners want to run. When you are building your team, leverage your networks and think of how you can outsource some traditional roles like accountants, lawyers, salespersons and marketers. Make sure that your teammates are the right fit for your venture.