Who should be a CEO? Who to invite to the team? How to organize work? How to manage people? Starting a company is challenging also from organizational point of view, therefore, Nina Dremelj from AlpVent equiped 10 selected startups from Start:up Alpe Adria acceleration program on the fourth workshop with useful advice about organization and financials last week. We share some of them with you.

A good founder ≠ a good CEO

"Some very good founders are just not good CEOs. I've met so many startups where founder is also at the position of CEO. This is many times the crucial mistake at the seed stage. Founder can be a perfect technician, but maybe not CEO. Therefore, having a different person as CEO is many times the best solution for the company. If you don't want to present the company, go to meetings, events and network, don't be CEO. You need to put down the CEO ego," adviced Nina.
 

Not everybody is the best for all tasks

The first step is to get to know yourself and to admit to yourself in which field you are good and in which you are not. And right at the beginning decide who will be the leader of the company, because somebody needs to lead the team to keep things organized and running.

Don't be too smart to do everything on your own. Put around yourself people with different knowledge and who know more than you. Try to get really good people on board and don't be afraid of people who know more than you. You need to have the best person for marketing who will know more than you, the best person that will help you build the production process….
 

 

The right people for the right position

You need to find the right people for the right position and convince them they join you, which can be difficult at the beginning when you have very limited amount of money. Nina advices to promise them something that's important to them. You need to find motivation trigger for each person. And it's not always the money. You can offer them e.g. share in the company or after one year and achieving defined results a special computer (if this is important to that person), …
 
And remember, the job of CEO is to lead people, not to control them. They need to be so responsible to accomplish given tasks.
 

Sales is the most important for the company

People can develop a product, but many times cannot sell it. Never assume about sales. Do your homework, do the market research, check the competition, learn from them, cooperate with them. Market is so big that there is enough place for everyone.
 
How to find the right sales person? Nina advices to choose the one that is talking smart and that asks smart questions and not the one who is talking a lot. The sales person needs to listen to be able to find out the problems of potential customer.