Lesson Progress:

Module 8 - Your dream team

2. Your wider startup team

Other than employees, there are lot of other people who will be involved in your startup success. Mentors, advisors, board members, NEDs… who are these people and what role can they play?

Mentors & advisors
At the beginning of your journey, it’s worth considering whether you can find mentors or advisors to guide you along the way. An easy way to do this is by reaching out to people who you think will have relevant experience and insight to provide useful input. If you’re doing something incredibly innovative, you might not find someone with direct experience in building a similar business, but lessons can be learnt from all areas of life so think outside the box. It might be that someone who started a fashion business has interesting insights for starting a food brand. Don’t underestimate the power of reaching out and asking to meet up for a chat – people love to help entrepreneurs, particularly those with mission-driven businesses. You’ll also be able to access mentors and advisors through accelerators/incubators you join. Most of these programmes have a network of people who are keen to help. These may generalist business mentors who can advise on many different topics or specific ones who, for example, can help with financial modelling. As you grow, your investors are also likely to become advisors, some more actively than others. It’s useful to consider how each of them can help and whether there are particular areas they may be able to guide you on. For instance, you can have an advisor for your marketing strategy, one for your logistics and one for managing your suppliers.

Board members, directors & NEDs
When you create your company, you will create a board of directors. Initially, this will just include you (the founders) but as you take on investors and grow your business, your board will grow too. Picking the right people for your board is a bit like looking for the right investors. Find people who broaden your perspective the more diversity in your overall team, the better. Pick board members who appreciate your mission.

Can they open up their networks to you or provide expertise where your team currently lacks it? Use board meetings as strategic planning sessions as opposed to a time to update and answer to your board members.

Top tip on making your board meetings useful

“Your board meeting isn’t about you reporting results back to your board for two hours. You should submit a document to your board with standard metrics so they can track progress. And then you should focus on strategy questions that you need answered and have those conversations during the meeting.”

-Marc Zornes, Co-Founder at Winnow Solutions