Village Capital, an organization that is "reinventing the system to back the entrepreneurs
of the future", has released a book [PDF] to guide first-time founders on raising talent. The 37 paged eBook with 9 chapters breaks down the process of hiring and retention, especially for first-time startup founders.
"Raising talent is just as important as raising capital," reads the tagline for the book with the objective of emphasizing how important hiring is for a startup.
Allie Burns, the Managing Director of Village Capital remarked that although startups say they need funding to hire talent, it takes talent to raise funding.
"There's a catch-22 with which any emerging market startup founder is familiar: it’s hard to raise money without the right team, but it’s hard to afford the right team before you raise money," Allie Burns said.
The book outlines the mistakes that startup founders usually make when hiring or trying to retain talent. One of them, according to the book, is treating hiring as any other administrative task rather than a strategic one.
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"Early-stage entrepreneurs make the mistake of viewing building their team as an
administrative function, as simply hiring," the book notes. Adding that "successful later stage business leaders understand that human capital is a strategic function."
They, therefore, recommend that instead of hiring talent that meets their current needs, founders should focus on hiring talent that can take them to their next destination. "Hire for the stage you want to reach, not the stage you’re at," the book pointed out.
The book also emphasized the essence of an organization chart and storytelling for early-stage startups. It also provides additional insights and guidance to founders on how to compete for top talent, hire for an all-star team and set up their teams for success.
Beyond that, it introduces the founders to performance management and employee engagement as well as how to translate themselves from the entrepreneur hustle to a manager and leader.
Towards the end, the book also provided a case study of Deloitte which "used similar principles to radically re-define their performance management system." The case study focused on how a Global organization with over 240,000 employees applied or implemented the guidelines and tips successfully.
The book was compiled with the support of Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs and Argidius Foundation. While different partners contributed knowledge and the content for the various chapters depending on their field of expertize.
The content partners are; Open Capital Advisors, African Management Initiative, Ripple Works, Resonate, Shortlist, and Edge.