Why does team matter at a startup?
As smart and skilled as you might be, even if you can do most of it you likely can’t do it all. Moreover, your teammates are also smart and skilled. Rely upon and trust your teammates to do the things that you can’t do. Sustain your teammates by doing the things that you can do to make the team a success. You’ll push each other to do great work, and support each other to get through the tough times.
You’ll learn from your team if you let yourself. You’ll learn how to do your own work better, and you’ll learn why what they do matters to your work. You’ll learn things that may not matter right away, but will matter down the road.
Beyond all that, being part of a great team is energizing and just plain fun.
Finally, your startup may well use Scrum, as we do at Primal Fusion. In that case team member is one of only three roles (the others being product owner and scrum master) in your software development process. Scrum is highly productive way to create software products.
This is one in a short series of posts called Ten Thoughts on what matters at a startup. The thoughts started life as a presentation I made at VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. While they’re far from definitive, and aren’t a top ten, they’ve mattered to me in my software startup experience.