Imagine you finally decided to start your company. There’s one more thing that you don’t predict – the human factor. You’re quite sure about all the details you have scheduled and this roadmap looks wonderful.

The second most crucial factor to the success of your startup is getting the right people into your team. A high-quality car engine will always consume cash – hence investing in the right people to build a high performing team will take effort, time and money. 

Luckily, several startup launches have demonstrated what the greatest challenges are for the business owners. The startup essence is about a team of people who are very fond of the venture and not a bunch of contractors who can do a job.

In this article, we list some common startup challenges and how to overcome them. We will also identify some common errors and solutions.

No business expertise

Everybody can find a startup, and it is certainly a good thing. But this also means that people without a background in the industry do not always know the project limits – whether the plan is handled from a corporate perspective or the right team structure. When a crucial decision falls on a few people, you must trust people with practical experience. It’s easier to delegate power to people with vast experience, like in other areas of life.

Let’s say, you have done well in the restaurant business, but want to make a bright brand. In this situation, you can definitely get a person to run similar projects and know how to execute them, and how to publicise them after they are released.

Local talent pool

When it’s the international business, we tend to expect the same level of quality, which means a wide choice of candidates. Even if this is the busiest IT den, the hunt for a correct team member can still have limitations; thus recruiting abroad will be the only way. In addition, it is difficult to compete with smaller startups in order to pick a strong local candidate for this type of worker in your workplace.

Going completely out of comfort zone and making the whole workforce comprise of foreign people is certainly not the way, but it often makes sense to recruit some people from outside. Adding a number of international members do add benefit, but always be ready to replace such a worker if you’re looking for long term success, as they may not stay indefinitely.

This is essentially our job — helping startups build a strong, remote team that is capable of developing, testing and supporting the business.

Lack of development process understanding

Even for a tech-savvy person, software engineering is a hard-to-grasp area that demands in-depth expertise. Learning from scratch won’t be the saving grace as we can barely think of a more time-consuming affair. For that matter, get a dedicated Chief Technical Officer (CTO) to make your life much simpler and take care of all aspects of internet engineering and mobile engineering, including design and testing.

In many aspects, the CTO can serve as a co-founder and share responsibility so you can be sure that the code is delivered on time and runs smoothly. Business owners are often well-rounded experts in many ways, however, let’s note, they should not be responsible for choosing the system for the sake of the success of the startups.

Role distribution

It is expensive to have a large team and, as a result, startup CEOs tend to conflate the roles within a group. Although it makes sense not to employ a technical writer for an Agile project, for instance, it is definitely something to avoid getting the developers to do the research.

At least one project manager, designer, developer, and QA engineer should be in each tech team. You can also include a product manager or business analyst depending on the scale of the project— it all depends on which parts you have already taken care of. Generally the addition of DevOps, customer support, and computer developers is reserved for large-scale projects and should only be considered when needed.

Hiring

It may seem like a fun experience to be a judge for “Australia Got Talent” TV show while listening to someone and then saying “yes” or “no.” But in fact, it’s a very stressful affair. Just spreading the word on candidate vacancy could leave you tired, let alone going through countless candidates who may be confused about what they’re doing here.

The job of a committed HR is worth much less than the precious time of the developers, so assign the onboarding best to those who are willing to take this hit. Besides that, you’re not going to have to deal with the firing process, far from being the most pleasant thing. Even though the candidate selection was on-point, there are still external factors that may obstruct their job, and you always need a person who can immediately remove an unproductive employee to keep the project safe.

Common goal

This is where you must lead by your own example— you must really get an idea of what the project brings to the customers. The beginning is like your baby – you conceive it and take great care of it. Be ready to accept that everyone won’t share his or her eagerness for its well-being.

People don’t make startups for pleasing the ego, so don’t forget to show some love towards it.

Communication

Yes, the continuous struggle between good and evil: development and business processes – what should the priority be? Yes, it is in the best interest to keep them in harmony, and both are important. Whatever the agency, you’re all in this together and should work together against the storms.

The easy answer is regular productive meetings. It is a backbone that keeps the entire project going. In general, if it’s a remote team, each participant must continuously work together; luckily, with advances in technology plentiful options exist such as video conferences, corporate messengers and project tracking tools. 

You can spend months or even years trying to gather a team of professionals that can bring you glory. You can’t make mistakes like recruiting inappropriate people or failure to fill the job. So, you have to train yourself. Concentrate on your product, take risk, communicate correctly, evaluate your performance, and your startup will be more successful today than tomorrow.

The above startup challenges are faced by most of the new businesses, and to overcome them, you have to take decisions that are in the best interest of your company.  To know more about our services and how we can help, feel free to talk to our Start up consultants. Book your FREE Consultation Now!