

Developing a startup team - tolu_olubode

Hi, my name is Tolu and i&#x27;m 17. I&#x27;m working on a new website as a project&#x2F;experiment into building a startup. I&#x27;ve always been interested in building fantastic products that users enjoy and love using. 
I&#x27;m currently underway in building an MVP with a team of 4 other people. The hope is that if the site really takes off we incorporate as a startup and if not well lesson learned and life moves on. However I do now see a real chance of this becoming something. Now my question is at my age its to expensive to get a full fledged developer or designer or whatnot, but its a lot harder to keep my team members who are friends and colleagues interested in the long run. How do I do keep them committed in the long run, eventually build a culture we can expand into a company culture and really build this?<p>P.s This is my first post, I really love just perusing this site. Any thoughts, advice and nuggets of wisdom is greatly appreciated
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mtmail
So five people work on a project with the goal of earning money from it and
incorporating in the future.

The others might be your best friends but my advise is to setup a contract
first outlining exactly who owns what in that project. Even if you verbally
agreed on 20% each there will come a situation where you argue that one person
spent more on postage and the other spent more on legal fees or yet somebody
else put twice the hours in as the next. Or you worked from somebody's living
room (kind of an expense). At that point you will argue about percentages
again so better to have it in writing as soon as possible. Source: been there,
done that.

A contract also helps establishing that work created for the project belongs
to the full team. E.g. nobody can go out and sell/reuse the domain or logo
without the other people's permission.

To break the ice maybe just point to the movie 'the social network' (the one
about the Facebook where the Winklevoss twins didn't set a contract).

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tolu_olubode
For some reason, I knew that movie would be referenced. But yeah that is sound
advice. Thank you

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RaitoBezarius
Currently, how your team is organized?

Do you have at least a developer? Do you have a designer?

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tolu_olubode
For all intents and purposes, I'm the CEO and lead developer. Everybody else
is a developer. We are currently in the process of getting a designer. The
main problem is getting one that is willing to just join the team for later
equity, but this person would need to think long term.

