"How do You Find your Wife?" and other such compelling questions and answers on team-building....

At our second Alliance of Angels Alumni event, panelists Robert Bergquist (CEO of Widemile) , Jeremy Jaech (CEO of Trumba) and Glenn Kelman (CEO of Redfin) shared some gems on team-building with a standing-room only crowd. John Cook of the Seattle P-I both moderated and blogged on the event, and much of the panel's wisdom was amply covered there. Here, we’ve indexed some additional insights from panelists and moderator alike.

ABR

• Always be Recruiting: the acronym of the day, coined by Bob Bergquist.

Chemistry

• Asked “how do you find the right team member to add to the founding team?,” Jaech responded “how do you find your wife?” It’s not just about hiring the resume.

Compensation

• Kelman suggested an employee response : "3% raise? 3% my a**! I need to move out of my parents’ house!"
• Bergquist: With pay, we can’t match the big guys, but there are intangible benefits to being part of a startup.
• Kelman: It’s a red flag is a prospective employee asks for a big severance package. Don’t even negotiate, just don’t hire.
• Bergquist cautioned that everyone has a different concept of fair, so surface those expectations, and match them.

Competition

• On out-recruiting the competition in the Bay Area, Kelman suggested: It’s tough when Stanford students come into Seattle on a rainy weekend. Facebook is basically hiring their entire class. However, Microsoft just backs up a bus in Silicon Valley and trucks ‘em up here.
• On recruiting talent away from the competition, Jaech noted: We’ve seen great programming talent out of Microsoft, but being a monopoly they don’t necessarily know how to sell.

Costanza

• When Glenn described his refusal to leave the building after being fired from Plumtree, Cook suggested he was the George Costanza of the start-up world (1992 Pez Dispenser episode, where George rejected the breakup).

Executives

• Jaech: With your executive team, you need trust. I don’t mean love and affection, you just can’t be checking up on people all the time.

Firing

• Kelman recalled commentary from a start-up COO mentor of his “I couldn’t fire the f-ers fast enough!" Glenn further reflected how the CEO of Alaskan Airlines had advised him to hire slow, fire fast.

Founders

• Jaech: Build your business around the team you have; don’t wait to hire those critical skill sets.
• Cook has interviewed more than entrepreneur who claimed to be a member of the founding team when they came on board 5 months after the company’s inception. He’s on to you so, don’t even try it.

Referrals

• Regarding employee referrals, don’t you want to expand the gene pool? Bergquist noted that in Seattle, it’s two degrees of separation, however…….

References

• ...all panelists suggested the tightly-knit Seattle community is no excuse not to do thorough reference checks. Jaech cautioned employers to listen for coded language in reference checks. "Don’t just ask their last boss- they might be trying to get rid of them!"
  

Recruiting

• When asked about the success of joint recruiting events, Kelman suggested the co-host has to be a somewhat attractive company to work for, just less attractive than Redfin.
• How long does the CEO stay involved in interviewing new hires? Bergquist predicted: "I’ll be interviewing for a long time to come."