#061 - RERUN - How to avoid mistakes when building a team - lessons from mentoring 1200+ hardware entrepreneurs, with Alan Clayton of SOSV

The Hardware Entrepreneur

This is a rerun episode after one month of no publishing. As mentioned in the last episode, I changed the publishing frequency to monthly. Why am I doing now a re-release of a past episode? Perhaps you’ve seen the recent report by HAX, the hardware accelerator based in Shenzhen, China and in San Francisco: their first hardware report in 2018. In the report they mentioned the importance of a great team when building a company and immediately this past episode with Alan Clayton came up in my mind, who’s the person assessing hardware startup teams’ healths. Since this is a very important topic, I wanted to bring it in focus again by re-releasing this episode.

Alan has been working for SOSV, the Venture Capital company, since its beginnings in 2010. You might know as SOSV as it’s the world’s top hardware VC. They’re special also in another aspect as unlike other VCs, SOSV runs accelerator programs, such as HAX, HAX Growth, RebelBio, IndieBio, Food-X, Chinaaccelerator, MOX. They are understandably very tech-focused and Alan Clayton is the person who understands people. This means he makes sure you have the right team to deliver the right results as otherwise things can and if they can, then they will go wrong.

The question we addressed in this episode is: how can you maximize your success with your team? You can learn in this episode about successful team’s composition, the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) for testing what areas the team covers, and also how this knowledge can help you pitch your idea better. So in essence we’ll go deeper than just talking about the left and right brain thinking.

Enjoy this episode!

Raw transcript is available at: https://www.thehardwareentrepreneur.com

Show highlights can be seen below:

• Do you use your brain’s full capacity? - [3:27]
• What SOSV stands for and Alan’s role in the company – [6:38]
• Who is Ned Herrmann and how his work is helping startups work more effectively? – [7:48]
• At which phase of the startup process you will most surely need Alan? - [9:17]
• How does a startup founders’ assessment unfold? - [12:42]
• Which type of intelligence are you - Captain Kirk, Doctor Spock, Scotty the engineer or Doctor Bones? - [15:04]
• How to avoid conflicts and benefit from the team diversity at the early stages of a startup? - [21:38]
• What are the major success factors for hardware startups? - [24:58]
• What set of skills does a hardware startup CEO need to develop? - [27:20]
• A Star Trek crash course on pitching - [30:30]
• If you could time travel and go back in time, what notes would you give yourself? – [34:54]
• Which book had the biggest impact on his career? – [35:39]
• Some cultural differences that Alan observed throughout his career – [36:46]
• Alan’s recipe for a good start of the day - [38:55]
• What is the best way to reach Alan? – [42:20]