This unit explores how inclusive hiring can be a source of competitive advantage for your startup.
We’ll look specifically at gender diversity, ethnic diversity, neurodiversity, and people with differing ability, but the concepts that we discuss are intended to reflect a focus on diversity in the broadest sense.
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This unit covers how to manage risk in startup teams. We’ll start with managing conflict between cofounders. Then, we’ll discuss how to use vesting of founder shares to help protect the company if one founder leaves.
Disagreement among cofounders can lead to a breakdown in working relationships. If this breakdown isn’t addressed, it can cause startups to fail.
If you haven’t already, download and complete a Founder Alignment Exercise. It can be a useful way to unpack the expectations of each founder and identify any mismatches before they lead to breakdowns in team cohesion.
Another simple strategy that can reduce the risk of serious cofounder conflict is to discuss how the cofounders will work together at the outset and reflect what’s agreed in a cofounder agreement.
A cofounder agreement is a simple legal agreement. It sets out how the company will be run, how the cofounders will make decisions, how they’ll resolve disagreements, and what happens if an agreement can’t be reached.
The key elements of a cofounder agreement typically include:
It’s important to draft a cofounder agreement before anyone has created any substantive intellectual property (such as writing code) or there’s any money involved (either customer revenues or investor funds). Last, make sure that each cofounder signs the agreement!
Despite your best efforts, it’s possible that you or one of your cofounders will decide to leave the company. Departure of a cofounder in the first few years of a startup is surprisingly common. It can happen for many reasons, including financial pressures or disagreements between founders.
A founder leaving but remaining a large shareholder can be a major demotivating factor for the remaining founders, who are working hard for no additional benefit. It can also make the company much less attractive to investors because someone who’s (at best) passive and not contributing now owns a sizable chunk of equity, or (at worst) disgruntled and actively seeking to block decisions or refusing to sign critical documents to disrupt the company.
To address this problem, startups frequently adopt founder vesting. That is, each founder earns equity over time, contingent on their ongoing involvement and performance.
The mechanics of founder vesting vary somewhat by region. In essence, they enable issuing of shares to cofounders on company formation. The company holds the right to buy back some or all of those shares at nominal cost if the individual leaves.
The longer the person remains in the company, the more of their shares vest (ownership transfers permanently to the individual).
The main benefits of founder vesting are:
Founder vesting has two components:
It’s common for early-stage investors to insist on a reset of founder vesting so that each of the founders has to re-earn their shares, including any that had already vested.
This can be a contentious point, but investors often request it because they want to have confidence that all members of the founding team are committed to the business going forward.
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It’s important to consider the value of teams versus sole founders. A sole founder often begins startups. But before long, most sole founders realize that having a team is critical to the success of their company. Hiring a team doesn’t just help manage the volume of work, but also helps tap into a broad range of skills and perspectives. Being part of a team also provides moral support.
In this unit, we’re going to talk about startup teams. We’ll first look at the personal attributes that are highly correlated with success in startup teams. We’ll then consider functional roles and how to ensure that they’re filled at the right time.
This section lists important attributes that should exist within every startup founding team. It’s not essential (or likely) that every team member will have all these attributes, but it’s highly desirable that each of the attributes exists somewhere within the team.
It’s also important to look for these attributes in early employees, because they tend to correlate with high performance. Also, it’s vital to have a good cultural alignment between founders and key employees.
Curious founders are genuinely interested in understanding problems. Curiosity leads to solutions that better meet customer needs.
Founders who have this attribute:
Startups that deeply understand the domain in which they’re operating are more likely to have important insights that are invisible to others.
Founders who have this attribute:
When combined with broad curiosity, this attribute can lead to T-shaped skills in which the person has a formidable combination of breadth and depth.
Speed of execution and rapid iteration are important competitive advantages in any startup.
Founders who have this attribute:
Startup founders need to be able to persist despite challenges and setbacks.
Founders who have this attribute:
This attribute is often closely connected with high levels of optimism.
Successful startup founders understand objectively that most startups fail, yet they have sufficient optimism that they’re willing to back themselves to succeed.
Founders who have this attribute:
Startups don’t follow a linear trajectory, so it’s important to be able to pivot and scrap plans when initial assumptions turn out to be invalid.
Founders who have this attribute:
Startup founders need to be able to maintain a good working relationship, even in a chaotic and stressful environment.
Founders who have this attribute (also known as emotional quotient or EQ):
If you’re already part of a team, consider each team member’s strengths and weaknesses in relation to these attributes. Are any attributes conspicuously absent?
If you’re a sole founder, consider your own strengths and weaknesses and identify any gaps. This information will be useful to have in mind as you think about who else to bring into your team.
Let’s now look at the core functional roles that need to be filled in a startup. Because every startup is different, you’ll have your own ideas about the specific roles that you need to fill in your company.
The following table lists broad functional roles that need to be filled in most early-stage startup teams. In the early days, it’s not essential (and often not possible) to have a one-to-one mapping of an individual to a role. One person might have multiple roles, and roles might be split across individuals.
However, it’s critical to make sure that every member of the team is clear on which functional roles they’re responsible. You also must make sure that all roles are covered, or that you have a plan for how to cover them as you grow your team.
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When you’re a founder, your personal brand can add significantly to your company’s credibility. It can help you to engage more effectively with potential customers, investors, partners, and the media.
You can think of it as the sum of your professional reputation, what you stand for, what you’re an expert at, and what your mission is. Essentially, the sum of what you did before, what you’re doing right now, and where you’re going in the future.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos describes personal brand as “what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
Having a strong personal brand can be a critical factor in whether others buy into the mission and vision of your company. Whether they talk about it with friends and colleagues, recommend it to others, or trust you. People are naturally more inclined to trust a business when they can see who owns it and what they’re passionate about.
It can also be a major factor in whether the media views you as a competent and noteworthy spokesperson on topics that are relevant to your company. When you become recognized as a subject matter expert or thought leader in the domain in which your company operates. You increase the chances of journalists approaching you for comment, or to talk about what your company is doing.
You can think of increased visibility as a way to increase your surface area for luck. It’s not always possible to predict what opportunities might come your way, but by being visible and authentic, you can greatly increase the volume of inbound opportunities.
One way to evaluate your personal brand is to do an online search for yourself and see what you find. Imagine that someone else is doing the search and they currently know nothing about you. If they do find information, does it strengthen their trust in you as a person, and by connection, in your company?
You can also do a reverse search by using keywords that describe your core areas of expertise, just as a journalist might search for an expert to interview on a particular topic. When you do the search, does your name appear in the first few results? If not, how can you change that outcome?
By the time you’re working full time on your startup, you should expect that a web search for you delivers at least the following results:
If you’re a startup founder at the beginning of building a company, here are some practical things you can do to establish and grow your personal brand. They start with basic steps that you can take immediately.
LinkedIn is the online business directory that more than 600 million people use worldwide. Not having a LinkedIn profile makes you look amateurish. It’s essential that you have one and that it’s professional and up to date.
Unless your startup is in stealth mode, your LinkedIn profile should list your role as founder of your company. If you’re a full-time founder, your role should be the only current professional role listed, and should be the first listing.
Besides a professional-looking photo, your profile should include a summary that says something about who you are and what you did before. It should also provide a glimpse into where you’re going. Make sure your profile doesn’t read like you’re looking for a job!
The About section of your LinkedIn profile is also a great place to mention the kinds of opportunities for which you’re looking. People are naturally inclined to try to help, so you might as well make it easy for them. Think about your business objectives. What opportunities do you want more of, and how can you articulate these opportunities to make it easy for the right people to connect with you?
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Picking a good name for your company is a subjective exercise, but you can use simple criteria to identify potential names.
Good startup names have the following eight attributes:
Let’s go through each of these attributes and discuss why they’re important.
A simple name is one that has as few characters and syllables as possible. The shorter the name, the easier it is for people to remember, say, and type.
As a guide, you should aim to have no more than three syllables and no more than 10 characters in your company name. Examples are Uber, Canva, Yammer, GitHub, Bing, Xero, Slack, and Stripe.
One of the best ways to make your company name memorable is to invent a word.
Generally, it’s best not to use a generic or descriptive term (such as travel, finance, photo, family, pet, store, groceries, or movie) because many other company names are probably using the same term. Using generic terms can make it hard for you to stand out. It can also affect your search engine ranking.
The best invented-word names tend to hint at what the company does without trying to describe it in literal terms.
Examples (ordered from the most indirect to most direct hints):
You should choose a company name that people can spell, so that when they hear about your company, they can find it easily online.
If people have to guess the spelling of your company name, you’re introducing unnecessary friction. Some of those users give up before they find you.
You can test this attribute objectively with another person. Say the name of your company and ask the person to write it down or enter it into a search engine. Do this test with 10 people and see how many of them correctly spell your company name the first time.
You should expect nine or (preferably) 10 out of 10 people to get it right the first time. Any less, and you should consider finding another name.
You should choose a company name that’s easy to say. There are two parts to this test:
Some company and product names can turn out to be an insult in another language.
Research online to make sure that your preferred name doesn’t translate to something offensive. You might also decide to test similar-sounding words with different spellings, and to check with people who speak the language of your target non-English-speaking markets.
A common pitfall in choosing company names is to settle on a name tied too closely to your current product or market.
When you name your company too narrowly, you run the risk of a name that no longer fits. Particularly, if you later add other products, pivot away from your current product entirely, or focus on other markets.
For example, Emily is building a product to streamline personal banking and decides to use words such as “bank” or “savings” in the company name. The name could be a problem in the future if Emily decides to launch a product to streamline investment portfolios.
Think about all the adjacent markets you might ultimately focus on. Does your preferred company name give you a reasonable degree of freedom to build other products or enter other markets?
If you wanted to start a company called Microsoft today, you wouldn’t be able to have the domain microsoft.com (for obvious reasons). Maybe you could use a domain hack and try to register microsoft.io, microso.ft, getmicrosoft.com, hellomicrosoft.com, microsoft-app.com, or some other variant. However, most people would agree that isn’t a good strategy.
Many startup founders compromise the strength of their brand from the outset by choosing a name for which the domain <their-company-name>.com isn’t available. It could be unavailable because someone registered it and is sitting on it, or (even worse) because an existing business is using that domain. Instead, they settle for an inferior domain such as <their-company-name>.io or .biz. Or, they use domain hacks like the examples cited earlier.
Apart from causing confusion among users and making it harder for them to find your company, this brand compromise signals weakness. As pointed out by Y Combinator cofounder Paul Graham, startups that choose a marginal domain are often viewed as marginal companies.
If you’re going to be a successful global company, you should have the domain <your-company-name>.com.
This view might seem inflexible, but experience suggests that a small investment of time up front pays off by allowing your company to start with a strong brand. Rather than starting with a suboptimal brand that you’re forced to change later.
Not having <your-company-name>.com is unlikely to kill your company, but it does add friction by forcing potential customers to take extra time to find you online. As your company matures beyond the startup phase, not having the domain <your-company-name>.com can start to look highly conspicuous.
More importantly, the domain <your-company-name>.com should arguably be one of the key intellectual property assets of your business. The more successful your company becomes, the greater the risk you’re taking by not owning this asset. While you’re a small startup, whoever owns that domain is likely to happily sit on it. Maybe they’d accept a modest offer to sell it to you.
But let’s say in a couple of years your company is growing fast, you raise a large funding round, and you get some great media coverage. At that point, you’re exposed to the possibility that whoever owns <your-company-name>.com can try to take advantage of the situation by getting you to buy it from them at a high price.
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Microsoft Search is included with desktop and online versions of Office 365 apps. It can also be accessed from the Windows Search box, the Microsoft Edge New tab page, or from any browser at Bing.com or Office.com.
No matter where you start your work or school search, the results will always be private and secure. Users authenticate by signing in to their Microsoft Entra account and only see results for files, sites, and other information shared with them.
Also, all search requests from Microsoft Search in Bing are made over HTTPS and the connection is encrypted. Work searches on Bing are de-identified and logs are separated from public search traffic.
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Microsoft Search is a secure, easily managed enterprise search experience. It’s integrated across Microsoft 365 applications, your desktop, and browser to deliver more relevant internal results and increase productivity.
Using the power of AI and Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Search provides a familiar search experience to help people in your organization find information—like files, sites, people, answers, and more. Best of all, there’s no initial admin setup and it’s included at no extra cost with your Microsoft 365 subscription. As an owner, decision maker, or admin for your company, school, or nonprofit, use the info in this module to evaluate the experience and potential cost savings of this solution.
Watch this video for more information about Microsoft Search.
Scenario: Suppose you’re an IT admin who oversees your company or school’s intranet. Management is looking for ways to reduce support costs while also increasing productivity. Your boss tasks you with finding a way to improve your organization’s search experience. With the current search solution, many users complain it’s often difficult and time-consuming to find work info because it doesn’t index Microsoft 365 content. Also, you’ve been given a limited budget to implement a new solution.
To see how some organizations have taken advantage of the cost and time-saving power of Microsoft Search, including reducing the number of certain support tickets by up to 60%, review the Forrester report on the total economic impact of Microsoft Search.
At the end of this module, you should be able to:
Once an educator assigns a research project using Search Progress, learners use an augmented version of Search Coach to search for, collect, and annotate a desired number of sources. Like “showing your work” in a math question, Search Progress requires learners to show their research process and the critical thinking behind their source selections. When learners explain their selections and reflect on their research process, educators gain insight into learners’ thinking every step of the way.
In their assignment, learners see the parameters for their research project. They begin their assignment by selecting Search Progress from the My Work section of the assignment. Learn more about the learner’s experience with a Search Progress assignment in the following video.
Search Coach is a great resource for learners to use to search the internet, and as a “search engine with training wheels,” it can be integrated easily as part of existing in-class activities and discussions.
But what about when ad-hoc searching isn’t enough, and educators want to assign structured research projects?
Search Progress is a powerful learning app that naturally weaves into any existing research-related assignments such as essays, posters, and presentations, all in the existing framework of Teams Assignments. Through Insights and through the assignment structure itself, Search Progress is unique in its ability to help teachers “see” student thinking at each step of the research process.
Link to accessible PDF for “What’s the difference between Search Coach and Search Progress?”
Before Search Progress, educators only saw the finished product of a research project—the written report or presentation with a “Works cited” (or bibliography) page. Educators no longer have to wonder how learners found their sources, why they selected those sources, or how thorough their research was.
Search Progress allows educators to learn not just how learners search but the critical thinking they use to select sources. With a Search Progress assignment, educators can require learners to provide:
Educators are free to craft any prompt for the learners’ explanations or reflections. These fields are key opportunities for learners to build their metacognition and discernment skills; skills that benefit them well beyond the bounds of a single research assignment.
Learners might explain:
Learners might reflect on:
Once learners finish their research, educators can review each learner’s assignment summary page. The final deliverable includes:
Specifically, educators can see:
If assigned, educators can also review learners’ explanations and reflections regarding their sources and their research process. As with any Teams assignment, educators can then provide feedback and grade the assignment, or provide feedback and return the assignment to a learner for refinement.