Working in the field of human performance and innovation I continue to be amazed at the people I encounter who seek to make a positive impact on the world around them. I’m not surprised at their desire—many people want to leave a “dent in the universe”—I’m more amazed at the way they approach tackling their visions to make them reality. What they all seem to discover is that they need a way to build what they want. Often that discovering is aligned with the recognition that start-ups are a people business. People are how you succeed, or fail.
One such early stage pioneer is Chanston Douglas. After graduating from Prairie View A&M University Chanston decided to stay in Houston, TX. Following a well-worn path of many start-up founders he worked retail but always knew he wanted to explore new business opportunities and build something of his own. The first such opportunity was an electronics recycling company focused on addressing the question, “How might we capitalize on the wastefulness of Americans?” E-waste, as it is termed is only about 2% of the waste Americans produce each year but it is 70% of the toxic waste. Not necessarily a cheerful target but certainly an area worth exploring.
As entrepreneurs discover, sometimes where we choose to focus first is not the end of our journey. Following many months of research Chanston and his early partner, DeAndrea tried to develop a website for e-waste collection and recycling but simply couldn’t get the traction needed to establish the business. For as great as the need that exists to address e-waste the regulations around it and the complexity of the business processes and systems to support it wasn’t accessible to this newly formed enterprise. This became the first of several pivots.
While shopping at BestBuy for TVs with DeAndrea, Chanston experienced technical jargon overload. The sales associate and all of the materials provided obscured the viewing experience in a pile of obtuse language that made it not only hard to understand but also hard to compare alternatives. This gave rise to another idea, “How might we help make technology purchases easier for the non-technical?” More research ensued but yet again the business model remained elusive and attracting the right resources to support the early stage concept was a challenge.
The breakthrough came oddly enough while playing pick-up basketball. Chanston professes to being “slightly competitive” and found that he was losing and getting upset. No matter how hard he tried on the court he and his teammates were just not able to get the job done. His frustration led to the recognition that the absence of good team members was also one of the key factors in his previous inability to convert good starting ideas into viable business options. With that in mind he knew what his new focus would be: “How might we help early stage entrepreneurs and start-up founders pick better people to support their efforts?”
This revelation was born out in recent research shared at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC. There are two primary hurdles in creating new enterprises. The first is in creating the ideal team, including: complementary skills, diverse backgrounds, and shared operating visions. The second is in forming the ideal mix of relations on the team, including: trade-offs between familiarity and quality, role expectations and alignment, and handling role conflict.
For many founders, working through these issues is like building an aircraft while it is in flight; mixing recruiting with simultaneous team-forming while producing and selling a new concept—it’s no easy feat. Beyond that, one in four start-ups fail because they don’t have the right team. It’s the third reason for startup failure (after “no market need” and “no cash”). Solving the people equation is a critical focus for any founding entrepreneur.
To tackle this issue Chanston and his team have developed and launched Pleero. Pleero is a network for entrepreneurs and innovators that are in the pre-startup ideation stage, looking for others with whom to team up and build their idea. Their premise is that there are many ideas that aren’t fully realized simply because a person doesn’t have the knowledge and skills to carry it out. People can use to Pleero to find and build their complete startup team. Users have the ability to search for others based on their location and/or skills.
Our main focus is helping great people team up with other great people.
Having recognized from personal experience that getting a startup off the ground can be very difficult the Pleero team wanted to make it easier for people to connect and share ideas to accelerate startup/small business team formation and output. With so many problems embedded in the life of a start up, a little help building the best team possible would seem to go a long way to promoting increased levels of success.
Some other start-ups seek to tackle this issue, but for more focused market segments. With Riipen, a group of students developed an online platform where companies post projects for emerging talent to complete. Frustrated by the lack of job prospects on graduating from university and seeing many of their friends take low-skilled jobs as bartenders and baristas because they were consumed by student debt, the founders realized something had to change. Rather than filling a need on the part of entrepreneurs they sought to broker the opportunity space between low experience yet high energy graduates and companies willing to take a chance.
In each case the need to bring people together to accomplish goals cannot be denied. The desire for meaningful and useful connections, the power of collaboration, the network effect of team-driven entrepreneurship means we won’t be seeing the last of this kind of start-up building enterprise. If you want to launch a start-up and need key resources check-out these network options. Who knows, you might meet a whole bunch of Miss and Mister Rights.
