Branding and team building are some of the most important activities a company needs to do well in order to succeed. As a small startup, how should you approach these two critical activities?
In a talk he gave to the New York Founder Institute, Charlie Kim, CEO of Next Jump, shared his experiences building his company, surviving the dotcom bust, and what the journey taught him about branding and team building.
To quickly share with you some of Charlie Kim’s insights, we’ve listed some key branding and team building takeaways he emphasized through his talk.
BRANDING
1. Branding can take time.
The number one company most people think about when they think about brand is Apple. When you think about Apple, you think about their logo, and you think about their campaign Think Different.
However, Apple would be nothing if Steve Jobs had not come back to Apple in 1997, 21 years after initially coming up with the Think Different campaign.
The number one company that people think about in relation to branding was nothing until 21 years later.
Hence, startups should keep in mind that branding can take time and several pivots in order to be successful.
2. Do not decide too early how you want to brand yourself.
There is a adage that says, “Don't decide too early what you want to be when you grow up.” In the same sense, you should not decide too early how you want to brand yourself or your startup. If you brand yourself in a particular way, you may find it very difficult to unbrand yourself in the long run. Take the example of Groupon. As much as Groupon tried different techniques throughout its genesis, everyone they talked to would always associate them with daily deals.
Don't spend a ton of energy building your entire plan for branding at the early stages.
TEAM BUILDING
1. The team is the most important factor.
According to Charlie Kim, the key factor that most contributes to the development of a company is its team. Teams quickly become the single most important variable for a startup founder: a great team will contribute better ideas, will develop better business plan iterations, will help investors see value in early funding rounds, and will eventually lead to more profitable businesses. Therefore, it is all about the team.
No company does a better job of taking care of the team than the Marines. The team comes before the mission. The stronger the team, the better prepared everyone is for the mission at hand.
2. Hire the right people and have an amazing environment.
How do you build a company that is focused on your number one asset - people?
If you want to build a strong culture of innovation, employee engagement and leadership development, you must invest in the right environment. It starts with hiring and promoting the right people.
Hiring is critically important. Once employees come onboard, there also should be a good environment inside the company. Because if you hire amazing people into a crappy environment, they become crappy. If you have an amazing environment and keep hiring crappy people, your environment will become crappy. People matter.
3. Build team bonding through suffering together.
How do you deliberately faciliatate teams bonding with one another?
Charlie Kim recounts what he did in his company for team bonding. "We have a dance competition in the office, where every member in the office has to do a dance. They have to battle onstage in front of real judges and perform, and know that it is going to show up on YouTube. If you are a geeky engineer, the idea of dance practice - they would rather die than do this. But there was amazing bonding that occurred in the company. By the time they performed, they were like best friends."
When you suffer together, you are bonded together.
Watch Charlie Kim's full presentation below to learn more insights into Branding and Team Building that he has gathered through his journey with Next Jump.
Graduates of the Founder Institute are creating some of the world's fastest growing startups, having raised over $1.75BN in funding, and building products people love across over 200 cities worldwide.
See the most recent news from our Grads at FI.co/news, or learn more about their stories at FI.co/journey.
