Heads-up! This post is largely biased towards web startups.
Spoken enough but still, the value of just an idea is zilch, it’s just a new combination of existing things.
The way startups grow (or) become successful is in it’s tendency to adapt to market changes and build something that customers really want. Hence it boils down to the team and how effectively they can adapt and build things. Investors / mentors / advisors bet on the team more than the idea.
Let’s start with the size of the team – 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 ? In my view 2 is okay, 4 is too big (you already lose 75 % of the company 
), 5 is disastrous – to me 3 appears to be the ideal number. What are the characteristics of these 3 members ? (hope you remember the heads-up!)
P1: Builder. If you know Hari well, you can skip this paragraph. This guy should be a real hacker in terms of getting things done. He should be easily able to transform logic into code and constantly keep a tab on issues like security / scalability, etc. There’s never a feature that can’t be done – it either can be done better (or) figure out a quick hack to get it working, that’s the attitude. Bottom-line, you can sleep well if you know the server is under his control.
Remember this guy is not any of those programmers you might find at a top MNC, he is a solid hacker, done a lot of things apart from his normal work, contributions on the web, etc.
P2: Marketer. No I definitely don’t mean an MBA, in fact he shouldn’t be an MBA. This guy should have a very strong knowledge of Computer Science (yes, you read it right!) coupled with ability to communicate stuff clearly to people. In an era where we don’t read advertisements, attend phone calls from unknown numbers, outbound marketing is almost dead. Added to that in a startup, there is always a resource constraint and is definitely not scalable to sell in the traditional way, remember you are just a 2-3 member team and the traditional marketing / sales rules wouldn’t be applicable to you.
The primary role of this guy is to focus on inbound marketing – getting the startup found and tracking user behavior ensuring the percentage conversion at each step of the funnel gets better. If you want to know what it is and how to go about doing it, hubspot is the hub! Blogging , Google analytics, e-mail , networking (online & offline) , pitching at various events would be the primary role.
P1 & P2 would be the guys responsible to code and get the initial MVP out with the help of P3. They must also be able to iterate with feedback and get some ‘real’ customers. Only after getting some customers (preferably paid), should P2′s focus moves from code to sell, till then keep iterating on the product.
P3:Designer. Enough and more times said but not sure if it’s a programmer’s ego that makes him thing he could design webpages. A thumb rule – 9 out of 10 programmers / hackers suck at designing. This guy should be the Photoshop / GIMP / Dreamweaver expert. Anything that has got to do with designing web 2.0 buttons to providing an aesthetic look to the website should fall under his task list. Web startups need designers alongside, they are a *huge* resource to help convert visitors -> signups -> customers. It’s a big plus, if he can fix CSS bugs in IE!
This is my point-of-view on building a solid startup team which is into web products. We are progressing smoothly at interviewstreet and our new product seems to get a lot of love from people. This is just yet another lesson added to me, hope it’s useful.
PS: Somehow I start using the words “he” , “guy” , etc. in my blog posts and I have got comments (in a lighter way I suppose) that I am being a sexist. This is to clarify I am not and I am just lazy to write “He / she” , “guy / girl” every time I make a reference, you could replace the genders however you like!
