10 Keys for Startup Success

by Joey Flores on July 25, 2009

1. Great Leadership – Don’t be afraid to hire people smarter than you, inspire them, and then get out of their way.

2. Execute on the Basics – Don’t worry about every little opportunity and all of the newest tricks you hear about. Execute on the fundamentals and be great at your core business before you start branching out.

3. Understand Your Metrics – You need to understand your business, where your customers are coming from, how to reduce cost and so much more. Understand your metrics and make sure your decisions are based on data, not just hunches.

4. Clear and Open Communication – There is no place for secrecy or politics in a small organization. Sharing key company news and constantly providing decision makers at your company with news and information about the business and market will ensure that everyone knows WHY you are doing what you’re doing and will create a sense of common purpose.

5. Support Your Staff – Give your team the tools they need to be successful. The worst thing a business can do is hire highly effective people and then put a million roadblocks in their way or not pay for basic tools to help them. What is $300 per year for a CRM tool when you’re paying a sales rep $120k?

6. Set Goals – Set attainable, reasonable, yet aggressive goals for your company and individuals. Just remember, that while you want your team to push for outstanding results, creating goals that they can rarely accomplish is terrible for morale.

7. Align Your Compensation Plans with Your Strategy – Make sure people are incentivized to do what’s best for the company by making those things more valuable to them as individuals. If top line revenue is most important for securing your next round, pay commissions based on that. If making a huge release deadline will make or break your next investor meeting, offer a large incentive to the whole company for achieving that goal.

8. Understand Your Company and Your Team’s Values – What truly motivates your employees? Is it money? Is it recognition? Is it helping others? Put a program in place to reward your team for good performance that is in alignment with their values. That $1000 bonus might not work for people who love to help others. Offer to donate to charity in your star employee’s name as a better incentive. For recognition based employees, awards programs work better.

9. Admit Your Mistakes and Correct Them Quickly – You don’t have to be right every time. You just have to be quick to adjust and the best way to do that is admit the error and move on.

10. Have Fun – The key to success in any career, job or business venture is to enjoy the experience and make it a fun, exciting and challenging opportunity for everyone, including yourself. Make sure you take time to balance your life – work hard, play hard. Create an atmosphere of excitement and of working together to do something new. People who enjoy their job and their workplace are 100’s of times more productive than people who dread waking up every day.

Joey Flores
EVP of Marketing
StartupArmy.com – Bring in the heavy artillery