Whenever I talk to an audience or even write about the importance of having a good team on board, I never fail to share one of the best advice I ever got as an entrepreneur: A great team can make a bad product work, while a bad team will almost always make even a great product fail. The concept of a great team could be viewed in several ways and construed in many dimensions,but we all know when a team works well together and when it doesn’t. It’s always obvious.

I once spoke about this topic to a small gathering of young entrepreneurs in MD where I live and from my perspective, the ideas of a lot of the people in attendance were skewed. As far as I was concerned, they were ill-enlightened in their judgment of what makes a great team and what doesn’t. Just to clarify at this point, the age range of the people in attendance was around 16 – 27, so rationally they would be considered smart and aware. I wanted to get a better understanding of how some of these guys would pick their teams if they had the luxury of building their own start-up, so I came up with a game. I picked 5 people out of this gathering of about 30 people and they would be the ‘founders’. I asked them to come up with a team of minimum 6 people with whom they would build and grow their web 2.0 start-up. It was amazing the criteria with which some of the decisions were made. I had one guy who picked the oldest 5 people…he claimed they would be wiser, hence would “be better at business”. Turned out none of them could even code a web page, the most tech-savvy of them was average at best at basic HTML.

In my honest opinion, picking a team that would be great and make great things happen is a lot more complicated than making decisions based on how things look on the surface. It takes time, a lot of research, perhaps some rejection (from potential team members) and much more.

Individual Talent is NOT everything. Many times we tend to pay attention to stacking up the ‘Roster’ with the most talented guys, because we believe they will bring success. “They are good afterall, they know how to deliver the goods, isn’t this enough?” I believe not! For me, team chemistry more than anything sets the tone for success. A team with players that can effectively compliment each other will always laugh last. When I was hiring guys for my new start-up (currently being built), it was the first time I was ever having to bring people into my ‘wolfpack’ (which is now 4 by the way), I made sure not to look for people who were all round gurus, jack of all trade. Not only because they will be too expensive for a bootstrapped start-up but also because I worried about having too many ‘cooks on the same pot of soup’. I found a guy who was a genius with PHP, CSS and so forth but wasn’t necessarily the best designer in the world, I got a designer who is close to impeccable at his trade yet lacked the guile and class Google might look for in a developer or software coder. I sort of looked for people with different skill sets and had them partner up. I personally do not believe in having the best all-round guys to come on board with you and neglect team chemistry. If it was all about individual talent, Real Madrid would have won all the Trophies up for grabs in the past decade.

A good mix of Experience and youth never killed a start-up. All that talk about having only new guys on board a start-up is crap as far as I am concerned. I don’t like hearing it. Experience is the best teacher! If you have been through it, felt the joy of success and pain of set-backs, there’s no telling how much value you can add to a start-up. I believe having an experienced teammate on board just gives me a lot of confidence in them. I feel like they can spot a no-no far easier and more quickly than a novice, they can also come up with solutions for problems based on what they’ve seen and endured in the past. While the novice player is often enthusiastic and energetic, the experienced head brings the calmness, focus and tact to the table. Why not have a union of both if you can?

Professionalism is vital. I once read on the door of a Professor while in college that “Professionalism breads quality and efficiency”. Spot-on! in my opinion. Team members who will work well together must be capable of understanding that they are working with each other for a business and must constantly put their best foot forward. Characters that impair the progress of the team cannot be allowed on board. If one person slacks, it means the entire business slacks and this must be avoided at all costs.

They better be willing, not just able. Dedication, Dedication, Dedication! A great team comprises of people who are willing to sacrifice whatever they need to in order to see the start-up succeed. Whenever you have people on your team, ask yourself, are these people going to stay even when things get rough? Are they going to keep coding even when we can’t seem to get any Angel or VC to believe in us? Can they be willing to stay up several nights fixing bugs so we can meet our pre-set launch date? Are they willing to sacrifice their stipend when money is tight so we can advertise instead? I know it is a rarity to find people who will respond positively to these questions but those are some traits you want to look for in people you bring into the team.

On a final note, remember that a Start-up is like a fragile boat in the middle of wild waters, who you let on board decides whether you stay afloat or you sink!

One of my favorite books of all time is 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen R. Convey. I read that book when I was 16 and ever since then I have tried to set some standards for myself to make me both effective and successful. At lunch yesterday I had just emailed Spencer Maughan back, the guy behind FightMalariaNow (which is a great cause by the way and I think everyone should give it some thought) when my mate asked me if I thought Spencer will be successful with this project. The truth is that many people have tried to come up with novel ways of helping people suffering from Malaria in Africa and other parts of the world, but yet there’s always still a ton of ground that could be covered. It got me thinking about success and entrepreneurs. Over the course of our meal, we went on and on about young entrepreneurs and what it takes to be successful in this day and age.

I have succeeded in a number of my projects and also failed on a couple, I think most young entrepreneurs will fall in this same category. The brightest business people will tell you that they encounter just as much heartache as they do success…why? because they take risks? because it’s the norm in this industry to encounter both failure and success? because even the brightest business people are not so bright afterall? Frankly, I doubt you can keep yourself from failing, or atleast experience set-backs (if like me, you do not like that word ‘failure’) if you are an entrepreneur. You just have to take it in your stride, deal with it and come back stronger. That’s what makes a successful entrepreneur. Here are some habits I have penciled down and tend to relate to successful gen y entrepreneurs.

1. They terribly dislike working hard, they prefer working smart. Even in the corporate workforce today, the gen y guys are the ones who frown at the idea of coming in earlier and staying behind later the most. This generation was never brought up to believe in rolling up their sleeves and breaking sweat for 10 straight hours in the name of work. They believe in doing things their way, out of the box, to make their money. Successful Gen Y entrepreneurs prefer to come up with software, smart-manpower that will do something easily in 2 hours and take the rest of the day off, than spend 8hrs in a shirt and tie because it’s the ‘working culture norm’. In summary, they come up with smarter ways to solve problems. I personally however still believe in the importance of strong work ethic. That you choose to work smarter is no reason to be lazy, it should only afford you the opportunity to achieve more than you would have normally in a period of time.
2. They love to connect! And they’ll rather do it socially than officially. The younger generation love social networks, they love it so much that they built several. From Facebook to Brazen Careerist, from twitter to myspace… all are concepts born from the quest to connect by the millennial generation. Successful Gen Y entrepreneurs are constantly all over the social networks and media, learning and getting help from each other, marketing their start-ups, meeting potential partners and investors e.t.c. The earlier you start taking advantage of social media, the better for you.
3. They won’t do ‘it’ just because ‘it’ is what everyone else is doing. This generation prefer to do things because it’s what they believe will work best for them and not because it’s what has been working well in the past. They like to understand what they are doing before they indulge. Successful young entrepreneurs always look to build their own channel to success, they constantly look to come up with novel ideas and novel ways of achieving success.
4. They are strongly motivated toward achievement. When I talk to young entrepreneurs today, the urge and desire to succeed is obvious right from when they open their mouth. They want to succeed and get rich before they are 30 so they can retire and live that dream life. Who can blame them? you turn your computer on and the first thing you see on your homepage is “Google acquires company X  by 23yr old for $100million…” Everyone wants to make it to that point and they see no reason why not. They are motivated and won’t stop till they get what they want. That’s what differentiates the successful ones from the others…not giving up, no matter how tough it gets.
5. They are money savvy. There are several books that are published these days advising people on what to invest in and so forth. I knew all about taxes, 401K and all that good stuff when I was very very young. When Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad came out, you know I, like several other teenagers were on that ‘work of art’. There are loads of resources these days teaching the younger generation about finance and money…hence making them more business, money savvy. This is never a bad thing, infact the smarter you are with money the more likely you are to succeed as an entrepreneur.
6. Courage is their middle name: Successful Gen Y entrepreneurs are not afraid to stand up to anyone or talk about anything. They take risks, calculated risks. If you know how to ask people for help, then you are on your way to being able to secure funds, if you know how to get people to buy your stuff…you are on your way to being a good marketer. Aren’t these what makes a good entrepreneur anyway?
7. They don’t know when enough is enough. Successful entrepreneurs never believe they have had enough success ever. That doesn’t even cross their minds. They keep going, building new ventures, doing new things to achieve more levels of glory. Richard Branson could have closed shop after the success of Virgin Records. But no, he started Virgin Atlantic and then a slew on other successful businesses. Richard might not be in this age range, but I just feel this number 7 in particular is typical of any successful entrepreneur in general.