How to build a dream team for your startup

What kind of skills does a startup need at the beginning of their journey? Who should you hire as a part of your company and what skills are best to subcontract? Our product development expert, Pasi Pentinpuro has the answers in the second part of Haltian Startup Videos: Building your team

A successful startup needs a balanced team

Tech startups often start with an engineering team, but according to Pasi, it is a good idea to make sure that you have different kinds of talents in your team from the very start.

Here are the skills your startup will definitely need:

• Sales
• Marketing
• Finance
• Someone who understands the technology part of your project

Subcontracting R&D leaves room for business growth

So what are the things you should subcontract?

In a technology startup it’s obvious that you will need R&D (research and development), but hiring R&D talent has it’s difficulties and drawbacks.

First, it takes time to build R&D capacity and talent. Second, good and experienced workers are not easy to find. And finally, there is always the risk that having R&D within your company will be a cost to you before you get your business running well.

The benefits of subcontracting your R&D can be said to be the following:

• you’ll get an experienced team very quickly
• you only pay for the development of your product
• it saves you the trouble of building capacity at the early stages of your startup

In conclusion, to turn a great product into a successful business, you want to grow as fast as possible and reduce commitment and long-term investment.

Watch Haltian Startup Videos Part Two:

What’s coming in the Haltian startup video series?

Part three: How to get financing and funding

Part four: What are the main characteristics to look in an R&D partner

“In my work we often see companies that come here  with two or three engineers,  or two or three salesmen. Once they are looking for the next person to hire it’s very important that the next person is from a different area, that makes good sense.”

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