Visible Technologies CEO Adam Selig grew his online reputation monitoring company from a 7-person team to one that is over 50-people strong. To this end, it's good to hear his thoughts on how to manage and build a team. The first piece of advice he had to entrepreneurs is to be "flexible" because the expectations of what they're in for will most likely change in three months.
The other advice he shared was something many entrepreneurs say all to often: Don't expect to work half day or a full work day. It's an entire day. A startup requires "personal investment," he said.
"You can't really walk into a situation like that and think that working 9 to 5, you've come in to act like a more traditional organization," he said."You have to get your hands dirty."
Finally, to founders - have energy and inspiration to carry the team and keep them motivated. Indeed, corporate culture is top down.
So ever true. I started a company called Calibra, which had an enterprise product that helped marketers launch viral marketing campaigns. I funded the project personally until I need some external financing. However, I wasn't able to secure funding because at that time, most VCs were interested in consumer computing versus corporate computing. Listening to investors, I decided to change course based on their feedback. As a result, we changed the name of the company, the product, the strategy, the business plan, the business model, and even the sector. So by the time we launched Clupedia there was nothing that resembled Calibra.