When we think about nearly every major business success of the past few decades, images of the lone CEO-founder come to mind. Occasionally we see two-person teams like Larry and Sergey at Google. But rarely do we ever hear about or see the dozens (or hundreds) of teammates that back up these leaders. Entrepreneurship is a team sport and there’s no way around that—especially if you want to build the next game-changing startup like Google. Particularly after achieving product/market fit, a founder’s role is primarily focused on building the team that will realize the grandiose vision. Gone are the days when the founder is grinding alone in a garage. Teams are required to scale, and a founder without a team is destined to crash and burn. There’s only so much the founding team can accomplish on its own. Strong team members backing up and challenging the founders quickly become a force multiplier and propel the founders to new heights. The best founders know this and work hard to build a world-class team.
