Building second Layer within Startups

A lot of startups do have good founding team which is capable of building the initial product/service. These people are able to do initial groundwork to bring startup to decent level. But all organizations want to grow with time and founders want to realize their dreams in big-way. So, from here originates the need of second set of key people who can drive organization to new heights. These people are typically either have less exposure than founders or want to gain experience before venturing to start at their own. Typically these people bring experience and freshness and can be very helpful to scale-up operations. Founders should understand the relevance of 2nd layer and act in following manner:

1. Delegating Work : Founders should start delegating work-areas in which they are either not good or they don't have bandwidth to carry it effectively. The 2nd layer of people should be given good amount of flexibility and responsibility with defined objective measures. These people should not ask founders for each small issues. By doing so, founders can focus their energies on core functional areas and other strategic issues.

2. Treating them as partners : Founders should not 2nd layer as employees only, since they can be very critical in scaling-up the business. They should be seen as business partners with reasonable equity participation as per time of entry and level. Even in terms of respect and place within organization they should be treated well.

3. Transparency : Founders should be transparent with 2nd layer, since these people are smart enough to gauge internal happenings. There is no point being secretive with these folks. Anyways, you want to groom them as future managers, hence let them understand good and bad things about the organization. If you have a genuine point and it is conveyed properly, then these guys would understand it in no time. Let them get complete view, rather than pointers.

4. Risk & Rewards : Tell them about risks of negative scenarios, while share rewards when they perform well. Think the way you would treat yourself in positive & negative scenarios. The 2nd layer will stick for longer time, once they start feeling sense of attachment and start sharing company's vision.

Once you are able to build a solid 2nd layer, there is no reason why you can't scale-up.