by Vivian Wagner

Created on: August 17, 2008   Last Updated: October 03, 2008

How to Identify and Overcome Major Barriers
Start-ups Face in the Building of an Executive Team

In order to succeed, a start-up requires the very best talent on its executive team. Unfortunately, however, it's not always easy for new, unproven companies to attract top executive talent. Start-ups must show that they have something to offer potential execs, and they also must have a clear strategy both for recruiting and for retaining these executive team members.

The people a start-up company recruits, however, are its most important resource - more important, perhaps, than the idea for the start-up itself or even a sterling business plan.

As John Preston argues in an article in Industrial Physicist called "Building Success into a High-Tech Start-Up, "From my experience in helping to create technology companies, the right attitude, people, and actions make a bigger contribution than a novel idea to the success of these endeavors. Never underestimate the role of passion, the importance of management talent, and the significance of teaming with the right investors."

But how does a brand-new company struggling to get off the ground, develop its business, and become a key player in an industry at the same time attract the top executive talent it needs to succeed? Below are several key difficulties start-ups face in finding, recruiting, and maintaining a top-notch executive team, along with some possible solutions to these dilemmas.

COMPETITION IN RECRUITING
Recruiting the best of the best can be grueling work for any company, but it's especially difficult for start-ups. The fact is, the executives a start-up company needs to attract need something in return to draw them to a new, unproven, and perhaps risky business.

If your company is recruiting experienced executives at other, larger, more established corporations, in other words, you're likely to run into resistance because they have better, or at least more reliable, opportunities in their existing positions.

As an answer to this concern, and a lure to bring the executives to their plate, start-ups can offer attractive equity sharing packages for their executives. In fact, the execs will expect such a package, most likely, before they agree to come on board.

"A very talented executive has options at larger corporations," said Dennis Lekan, President of Corporate Leadership Associates, LLC, a Cleveland, Ohio-based firm that specializes in executive and leadership development, executive coaching, assessment, and talent

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