When putting together a startup for Software Engineering web based applications/systems, what would you consider to be a good mix of talent, when trying to find partners?
This mix would involve defining the product and market, defining, implementing and validating requirements, and making the product polished and production ready.
And, of course, needing the fewest startup people as possible.
Be sure to have marketing people. You will need to sell something at some time and from recent experiences, even if your tech people can do it, it will be slow, painful and not a good use of there time.
Getting Real (from he Ruby on Rails folks) recommends a dev and designer and a sweeper (someone who can handle both code and design).
Having multi-talented people is essential. Can you program and market? Can you design and market?
You might be able to find one person to do 1 & 5. Probably another to do 2. A third to do 3 & 4. So I would guess a minimum would be 3-5 people, depending on the skill sets of the people involved.
Well, technical talent is, in my experience, usually not the problem. I'd say that the lack of the following three is the root cause of several failed startups:
On the technical/implementation side, having access to graphic design and usability expertise is critical for a web site to be successful.
Note that I'm definitely not saying that technical excellence and the ability to deliver implementations aren't important. I'm trying to point out what has been missing in ventures which I've observed.
Well, sometimes you're lucky enough to find people with a lot of skills - this means less people are needed on the team!
Also what you need depends on your target market and your product. For instance, if your product is aimed at people without much in the way of computer skills, you need to place a lot more effort on interface design and communicating with customers.
If your products are tailored to each customer you will also need more in the way of communication with the customer. Conversely a "one size fits all" approach will need someone who can get into the head of the "average customer" and decide what features are most important and which ones can be developed later.
Here are some things to look for (roughly in order of importance - but it depends on your situation):
Good overall-design skills - it's easier to meet a set of specifications than to write them up. You'll need someone with a knack for writing them up well; someone who can design an extensible, maintainable, flexible, and most importantly, sensible, system.
Vision, passion, and drive - it's extrememly useful to have someone on the team that inspires everyone else, can help make big decisions based on their vision of the end result, and so on.
Skill at creating intuitive user interfaces.
Experience in a similar area - helps you avoid making mistakes that have been made before.
Someone with good connections with potential customers - to get the product taken up by a few people quickly, perhaps in a "trial phase".
for the startup "core team", think in terms of skills, not people:
you'll need at least one developer to write the thing, and possibly others to help sell and manage it. You'll also need an 'on demand' support team consisting of banker, accountant, and lawyer. These should be people that you know and trust, that believe in you and your vision.
I would say that between all the people on your team you need to have the following roles covered. You could obviously use freelancers to fill some of these positions.
As a bonus it would be good to have a co-development partner -- to answer questions about the product as they arise.
For increased chances of success research the following
HTML & particularly semantic HTML, CSS, Accessibility and usability, Web standards, Interaction design, Screen readers, User experience, Usability testing, Branding
As hard as it is for techies to
admit, once you have a product, the
Sales Idiots People are the
most essential part of a small
business. If you don't have
customers, then it's a hobby.
Ideally they'll have sold in your
market sector before and have a list
of prospects.
Having started a company with only two founders, I'd also say that a third founder is essential so when there is disagreement, then you can always find resolution via majority. Be careful adding the 4th, 6th, 8th..etc though!
As for techies, it depends on how big the application is. One talented person should be able to handle front-end, server-side and database especially if it's just to produce a prototype. As you grow the app you can split these roles out and your talented techie becomes your "sweeper" (sporting names for job roles are rubbish).
Your Founders/Company Directors should get used to doing the admin and business management. If they don't know how to do that then outsourcing this will get expensive. Ultimately the legal responsibility for any mistakes in this area will lie with the Company Directors, so get used to it.
Outsource the rest.
I have done many startups, you will know when you are in good company/talent right away. You need someone to say "no", and keep the team on target. The biggest mistake is the feature creeps and massive overthought, just toxic for a startup. Get a "no" guy, you may hate him, but will thank him when your product hits target.
I have seem best results from: A likeable CEO, that person everyone wants to hang out with, nice face. A vetran coder/architech, backend Java. Crazy engineer, helps take it out of the box. Good and fast at prototyping. UI engineer with Photoshop, DHTML, and frontend coding experience. Diverse ops engineer, seasoned in Linux, Virtualization, and shell scripting or Python. Product manager with seasoned roadmap/PRD experience and marketing skills.