Growing Your Business

Expanding the New Venture’s Human Resources: Beyond the Founding Team

The founding team of any new venture is a key component of its human resources. A first-rate group of founders brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, skills, and commitment to their company.¹ Further, as common sense would suggest, the larger the founding team and the more varied the experience of its members (the principle of complementarity), the greater the likelihood that the new venture will succeed—specifically, the greater the new venture’s chances of survival² and the faster its rate of growth.³ But no matter how excellent a new venture’s founding team is, it cannot possibly supply all required resources or all forms of information. At the very least, new ventures ...