Building a high-performance team from zero

David: Just while Subana is getting her slide deck ready to share with you guys, well I’ve just mentioned really briefly that I think she is one of the most outstanding founders in the UTS Startups program. She's also an alumni of the MBAe, which is one of my favourite degrees because I did it. 

She's awesome, she works with Uber Australia and their talent acquisition but also has her own startup which I hope she'll share a little bit about called Postcode-F. If you have your hands free and can type that in a URL google Postcode-F it's an incredible incredible initiative you know. And so I think Subana has so much richness to share hopefully in the next sort of 20 minutes or so. So will you all join me in giving a little virtual clap so she feels appreciated that she shares how to build an awesome team from zero.  

 

Subana: Cool, awesome thank you. These introductions are always so strange. I'm like oh my God someone is talking about me but. Hey guys, thanks for joining this virtual presentation. That's my face to your left and just a little introduction about myself. I've been in recruitment for the last 10 years, worked with a range of companies in every industry. 10 years fields- I call it dog years. It feels like much much more but I’ve been lucky enough to work with some phenomenal people from a career perspective as well as businesses. As Dave mentioned I'm also the founder of Postcode-F. So, Postcode-F aims to empower and educate skilled migrants and refugees. A refugee talent and connect them with enterprise enterprises looking for talent. I guess the business, it's built on a mission to create a world where every individual's true potential is realised regardless of their circumstances. 

I'm just putting up one of my favourite quotes up there while I talk about this. So, we're going to discuss what a high-performance team is, the importance of it and hone in on three strategies to implement when you're building from zero. I think we can all agree the value of high performing. A high-performance team has always been recognised in any business context, in every single culture. Obviously, it means something different to different people, but fundamentally it's always in the forefront of every business owner as well as founders' mind. And apart from that, a huge number of savvy startup investors value the quality of the team and the interaction of the founding members more than the idea itself and it's why 90% of investors think the quality of management team is the single most important non-financial factor when evaluating an IPO. So, what are we going to cover today? So, three things: first one is a co-founder checklist. So how do you find your perfect mate? Second one is a people strategy: so, looking at talent acquisition as a product. Third is the business case for diversity, so very much my favourite topic. So, let's talk about how best you go about finding the right co-founder. So, finding the right person I would say is, when you're building your business is one of the most critical decisions and unfortunately there is not one size fits all. Like most things in life, it's part art part science. 

However, I like to apply two frameworks and I recommend you use this as well when you start on your startup journey. First one I call a quantitative framework. So, this is more of, you know, the measurable and tangible assets. I would just like you would your product, I would say pilot your relationship with your co-founder. You found someone, you think they're excellent, then build a six-week pilot program where you actually work on a real-life business problem with them. Ensure that this person complements your skills. This is quite an obvious one, so if you're not a technical co-founder find someone who is actually technical and learn the other side. So, you don't need to learn how to code but understand and make sure you have enough data points to know what good looks like so you can actually make the right decision. Align on working styles and communication cadence- super, super important. If you're someone who doesn't like WhatsApp’s in the middle of the night make sure that's communicated to the other person and align on what you actually prefer. Ensure this person's self-sufficient if it's just the two of you. So when you're not there this person's actually proactively doing their work. And formalise everything as well: as you know how you're going to agree, how you're going to manage disagreements when they do occur. This is going to save you a lot of heartache. 

Qualitative framework: some of the softest stuff, I think this is just as important though. I would say to you, I know there's a huge sort of rhetoric around opposites attracting in business, I think this is important. You need to ensure that there's measurable, you know, characteristics that are different between you and your co-founder. But fundamentally you do need to align on a lot of things because as I found out when I worked with a co-founder previously and that relationship completely fell through, because we were way too different. Choose character ensures your values actually align. This is the stuff that's actually going to keep you resilient and get you through the difficult times when you're starting up a business. And ensure you understand the other person's financial and emotional stability. Do they have family? Do they have a specific time where they have a runway, where they need to make revenue and have money? And this is one of the most important things, be honest about what you're actually building. You can inflate what you're trying to do to this other person but fundamentally they're going to come in and if it's not true to what you've described they are going to end up leaving which is going to be a lot more damaging. 

People Strategy: so, looking at talent acquisition as a product. So again, just like you would a product, your product and service through its entire life growth process you need to understand that there's going to be different customer groups and you can offer different benefits and features to your customers and cast the same lens to how you actually build up your startup. It's important to understand that the people that start with you aren't always going to be the people that stick with you as you grow and scale. Just as you know as your customers do when the product actually develops and becomes something quite different. When it's just you and another person, generally or zero to ten, I would say you're more likely/ it's better to look at people who actually are hustlers and tinkerers. They're able to have a lot of energy. They're able to actually create quite a lot from very little. Now these people aren't always going to be the people who stick with you when you get to that you know 50 or 10 to 50 mark. You need to start, at this point, start thinking about leadership skills, you need to start thinking about people and processes, you need to think about effective systems and tools so you're actually able to scale your business at a regional or global level. 50 plus employees: this is when you hire for the future. So, you hire for potential, you hire people who are big picture thinkers. People are who are actually investing get to in getting your business to the next level. 

Excellent! So, People Strategy: how to attract and retain talent. So, you've got. your co-founder, you understand the kind of stage growth stage you're in and the type of people you need. Now how do you actually go about building a story around your startup? Obviously being one person or two people, you know, resources are quite tight, time is very little and you don't have that much money to spend. So really think about investing on things that don't cost money. First one is employee value proposition. Second one is values admission, D&I and social impact. So, I'll start with employee value 

proposition. So, EVP is essentially, you know, why would someone want to work with you or your business compared to another company? So, this is, you know, this is quite important because you're constantly competing for talent from a lot of the big banks and the large consulting firms. So, unless you have a story to tell employees out there it's going to be very hard for you to attract talent. You don't need to be big and you don't need to have the sexiest product, you just need to be authentic in what you're doing and that leads to values and mission. If you talk to any person who's smart and 

is motivated you'd understand that they want to be part of something great, they want to be solving interesting problems. So, if you can create values and mission that actually can help someone realise that, then you will attract some of the best people in the market. Diversity and inclusion, social impact 

super, super important. So current social and economic climate this is even more important. So, it's really, really important for you to really think about what, you know, social impact projects 

your business is involved in. What do you actually stand for? Is it, you know, is your process inclusive? Are you creating an environment where, you know, women who have children are able to come into work, parents looking for flexibility are able to come in to work? This is extremely important for you to start thinking about as well. Offering challenging projects. Again, going back to the fact that 

smart people want interesting problems to work on, this is where that lies. So really think about, you know, how you can engage people, why they want to stick with you. Talk to them and essentially create job descriptions and work that actually suits that. 

Finally, psychological safety and flexibility. If you're going to have a diverse workforce and if you're going to attract people who have different wants and needs, you need to also provide them an environment where they can be their authentic self and share any feedback or any challenges that 

that they're actually facing. And then finally salary and equity. I put that at the end because I think that if you get this, the first, you know, few characteristics right then the salary and equity actually matters the most because at the end of the day people will go work for a big bank if they're looking 

for a big salary. They're coming to a startup because they want to feel like they're contributing towards something great.  

Finally, this is my mantra: always be recruiting. And this is not you know pitching your business to every single person you meet but it's about having genuine conversation about why you're doing what you're doing. People buy into your story and actually who you are as a person. So 

always be sharing that with anyone you meet. Do we have any questions?  

 

David: I just typed that into the chat because I was sort of thinking we might have a little bit of time. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just gonna watch it, but because okay there's a good one. 

 

Subana: Okay. 

 

David: So, diversity & inclusion.  

 

Subana: Yeah no but we can go back.  

 

David: Yeah, I think the question is just what's D&I, it's just a term.  

 

Subana: That's yeah really it's diversity and inclusion. 

 

David: I guess while we're waiting for a question one for me would be: being someone that's worked in quite a big and fast-moving organisation like Uber and then also working on Postcode-F. You spoke a little bit, and it's probably my favourite slide, around the zero to ten highs and then 10 to 50 and I've been on that journey, I've seen that but you know is there anything you can give us in terms of your experience and how we can make ourselves more hireable for startups? 

 

Subana: Okay, that's a really good question. I think okay, so there's a couple, yeah definitely, there's lots of things you could do. First thing, is to just get yourself out there. As you can imagine there is, at the moment, New South Wales specifically has, you know, has seen a huge boom in startups and there are people, you know, it's a great time to be a founder at the moment. So, everyone is going out there 

experimenting and hustling and doing things. So, if you're interested in actually joining a startup, get out there. Go to networking events, well obviously you can't physically be there right now, but there's lots of things you could do. There's lots of little co-working spaces, lots of networking events as well as, you know, talks such as these that you can join and then proactively reach out to people on LinkedIn, which is a great one. Because a lot of the times, you know, only the large startups tend to post adverts and jobs on LinkedIn. Sometimes, it's best to actually go out on LinkedIn and say, "Hey, so what you're doing is really interesting", and reach out to them and make an introduction yourself. So those are, I think, those two things you could probably proactively do to just get yourself out there and make sure you know what's happening in the startup space. So, kind of proving that you are a hustler in the way that you market yourself. 100 percent. I remember that the first time i ever saw you speak was it the MBAe Venture Day where you pitched Postcode- F and I was like, my jaw was hitting the floor, it's such an incredible idea. I realised that that didn't exist yet but there's a great question around team versus co-founders. So, what you're doing through Postcode-F is literally, you know placing great, talented people in companies.  

 

David: Why would you go for a co-founder or is it better to try and hire team members and just see how it goes? Like what's your take on that?  

 

Subana: Good question, so it really comes down to the individual and I even said it when I was presenting this slide, you know there's no size um one size does not fit all. And it really comes down to the problem you're looking to solve and what brings the best out of you. There’re certain individuals who thrive in a partnership and if you're someone who likes to do that then I would say absolutely go out and actually get yourself a co-founder so you can bounce ideas off that person and build something great together. But if you're someone who is like a lone wolf and you're like yep this is me, I stand for me, I'm just going to go forth and conquer then do that until you get to a point where you are you know you're doing too much and you actually need to delegate responsibility. And at that point start hiring people to actually take on social media, I don't know, engineering, whatever it is. So it it really comes down to assessing who you are and your strengths. And have a talk to your mentors and advisors on who they think you are and how you actually will be successful and then make an informed decision.  

 

David: Great, so I think your point about leveraging mentors and advisory is really good as well. And I guess that it's sort of moving on to another question from Peter here. 

Actually, Peter do you want to pipe up and ask that one? 

 

Peter: Hi Subana, how are you? So the question of how you determine an equity stake is, like I haven't had much experience, so are there formulas out there? There must be, it must be a sort of major topic that you know, you've got to value so many intangibles. Yeah. And you know how much time is going to be provided is obviously the main stake, but you know, time is is just one of the things that you would have to weigh up in that equation. You know, it's how much value do they provide to you. 

 

Subana: Yeah, it's also, so I was actually talking to a friend of mine who's running his own business in Singapore and, because I was curious, like how do you go about... because I think you can do maths around, you know what equity, how equity could work and do the preparation around that but then actually assessing how much equity you give someone is a difficult thing. The way he described it and I tend to agree as well is the higher the risk, the higher the equity. So if this person is in the business and has put everything in and is making decisions that could also risk their stake and their sort of livelihood within the company, then they do get to have more ownership in the company. I would say that would be one way of looking at it. Yeah, I'm sure there is no... Are you in a situation or what's going on?  

 

Peter: Well like for the you know one example is, I have a co-founder who sort of started off but has not really taken much interest in things, so you know since and that doesn't turn out to be a problem because there's no money being made and won't be for quite a long time. But I do wonder, you know if at some stage if he doesn't put more time in, is he still going to expect 50% down the track? You know when it's pure imagination that's probably the proposition but if there was some money being made and if you know, if I was devoting a lot of time and he wasn't I would want to reduce that that equity and that could be tricky and do you actually sort of have a, some kind of written agreement all the time? 

 

Subana: Yeah, so there's two things you're referring to right. So, I think there's a bigger problem which is the fact that it sounds like you just don't trust that he's going to put the work in. So if you continue this relationship and the business does do well, there's going to be other problems that are going to manifest. So I feel like the root cause, if you do a bit of root cause analysis, there is probably a fundamental breakdown in your relationship with your co-founder. So that's probably one thing to first address, and then as a result of that the equity conversation will come up. That would be my advice.  

 

David: Awesome questions. Thank you so much Peter, I know I can always rely on you for something, which is awesome. There's another quick question here which maybe we can sort of both answer here. If your co-founder is too scared to sign up with UTS Startup stuff, I think that's probably, we need to talk more about what UTS Startups even is, but in terms of you moving forward in a startup together, are there...  

 

Subana: Everybody froze again, you keep freezing. What did you say?  

 

David: When you're in a company together, a startup and you want to make big decisions together have you got any tips or advice on that? In terms of the direction of the company.  

 

Subana: Yeah, good question. So the easy answer would be, you know I talked about communication cadence, I think that's really, really important. So, having open, honest communication on a daily basis or a weekly basis is extremely important. I have recently, I'm working in the consulting firm and they decided, they essentially want to grow the business and sell it. And they probably will do that in the next 12 to 14 months but they made a decision to bring in a CEO too quickly into the business and it actually drove a huge wedge between the co-founders. And they just did it too early basically, and when we talked about why that actually happened, the answer was that both of them got busy, and they just didn't keep to actually committing to coming back and checking in to make sure that the business was going in the right direction and they both were on the same page in terms of where the business should go. So, I know it sounds super, super basic, but when you're running a startup, just having a check-in and having a check-in meeting might just seem like it isn't a priority, but it fundamentally is a priority because in a startup timeline so many things can change in a day. So just having that and having that communication is extremely, extremely important. 

 

David: Yeah, oh yes there's maybe sort of one minute until we're meant to kind of wrap up and have a break. I just, really quickly, can I ask around diversity and inclusion: what's the future looking like at the moment? What do startups need to be thinking about?  

 

Subana: Actually, I haven't finished my presentation but it's completely fine. I just wanted to stop and ask some questions before I went forward, but that's totally fine! I will go through it really, really quickly. Okay, so I did want to talk about diversity and inclusion because it's extremely, uh, it's a very important topic. So, just quickly whizzing through this. There’re about four things that are, you know a key reason as to why you should think about diversity: moral obligation, more innovative teams equal more innovative ideas and products equals profitability. Also having a more diverse team is going to make you much more attractive to investors. It's not just important to want to be diverse and build a diverse environment, you also need to put processes in place and mitigate unconscious biases when you're making decisions on hiring. So, these are the five types of unconscious biases that pop up, but affinity bias, confirmation bias, is something that we always see come up especially when you're hiring/ recruiting for a startup because you're under a lot of pressure and you want to work with people similar to yourself. And this is the type of areas unconscious bias actually impacts. So, engagement, you know communicating, performance management, succession planning lots of different areas. This is probably when you're more mature but I just wanted to throw that in there to talk to you guys about. And then how to mitigate unconscious bias when making hiring decisions. Just be aware of your emotional state, don't make critical decisions under time pressure or external pressure, and you know think about the problem you're actually looking to solve internally and make sure you have structured competencies that you're measuring the individual candidate against before you hire them. 

A company that does this quite well, we don't do it perfectly is Uber. I want to use Uber as a case study. So, we've actually got a set of competencies that we tend to assess every single talent against and what that, um it's not a perfect system because human beings are human beings and hiring managers tend to get emotional and make emotional decisions. 

What it does help people do is think a little bit more critically about how they actually assess and make decisions. Second one is values and norms, so create these no matter how big or small you are and ensure that it's actually tied to the individual's performance in the business. Uber does this really well and my performance is actually tied to how I live and breathe our values and there's financial metrics that are actually attached so, if I truly am a truly values driven employee it actually impacts how much bonus I earn in a year. So, this is just a quick example I guess of a company that's implementing what I’ve just spoken about. That's me, now we're done.  

 

 

David: Firstly, how do you get that much information out of your mouth in that quick a time?  

 

Subana: I have to learn to pitch that's why.  

 

David: I mean I hope that everyone, I know that everyone on the call knows how incredibly rich that sort of half hour just was. The amount of information and the amount of value that you've given us is like you can't put a price on that. 

 

David: You're too kind and no you're too kind thank you and these are my details if you want to have a further chat. I will try my best to help you, but one thing I just wanted everyone to take away is: just make sure you apply the same entrepreneurial lens that you apply to your business to how you actually build and structure your business internally. I think if you do that, generally you can't go wrong. 

 

David: Fantastic, again make sure guys you screenshot that or something. A lot of companies sort of either watching or that we are all connected to that could really use um some of the services and that you know recruitment as a product that you were just saying. So really, really fantastic stuff we, appreciate you so much. 

I appreciate your time so everyone clap react or clap in real life or both. 

 

Subana: Thank you, Peter if you want to have another conversation about what's happening reach out to me. I felt like we didn't really, we weren't really done talking so...  

 

David: Definitely thanks guys.