Building a startup team

This weekend I’ve been a mentor at the #SAPIhack event in Melbourne down at the York Butter Factory. During the event I was having a chat with Frenchie about what makes a great technology based startup team and he gave me the best answer I’ve heard yet.

The 3H.

The 3 core skill sets you need in a team are the following:

A Hacker

A Hipster

A Hustler

You can probably guess what they are but let me give you a little explanation of each. The Hacker is the code monkey. The development guys who knows how build or construct the actual thing. The Hipster is your design guru, the UI guy, this person has a style sensibility to them and knows how to make ‘it’ beautiful, desirable and usable. The last guy, the Hustler is the deal maker, the dream seller, the phone call maker and snake charmer.

You get the point – but it’s a great and simple way to structure a team. And we all need each other. It’s a rare situation indeed when one person can do it all. And it’s probably impossible to have the time to do it all even if you are a 3H-er. The other thing it points to is the oft divergent personality types that are needed and that there is room for all of us in startup land.

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