Lessons Learned From Our Nation's "StartUp": Talent Acquisition
Posted by Tim McIntyre on Tue, Oct 11, 2011 @ 08:59 AM
Months after its inception, the "original American startup" was failing: its founders had launched an untested, cash strapped venture with virtually no early adopters and certainly no MVP (minimum viable product).
Broken, but not shattered, the enterprise survived all this – how? Some might suggest through entrepreneurial talent of the first water – followed by strong leadership from the country’s first chief executive. 
The leap from hotbed of ideas to successful and growing enterprise is daunting, but contrary to convential wisdom (idea is wrong, or too early, or underfunded - the commonly cited reasons you see in the tech press) many startups fail because they don’t know how to bring in key contributors, at just the right time. In a way, this is how our fledgling nation was salvaged, through a specific outreach (executive recruiting) for the right talent, at the opportune moment.
Even if a startup's founders do indeed act on time, too often they make the easy mistake of hiring the wrong leader for their team, say venture capitalists in an exclusive poll we conducted recently, which we'll be writing about in a forthcoming Ebook.
Our survey of 2,300 vcs revealed some surprising data points. Stay tuned for more details.
Based on these results, and direct interviews with VC's, we'll present five crucial steps your startup must take to ensure it makes the leap from garage to IPO intact and ready to grow.