15 Jan
2009
Joel Spolsky wrote an excellent piece describing an idea an intern had while working for him at Fog Creek Software to create a job board system to allow FCS to capitalize on all the web traffic they were generating. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/how-hard-could-it-be-thanks-or-no-thanks_Printer_Friendly.html?partner=fogcreek It’s an excellent story to highlight a key question: how do you reward genius in your startup? Do you call them out publicly? Do you award them cash bonuses? Do you give them more stock? It’s a tough thing to decide sometimes depending on the situation, because you don’t want to reward someone if by consequence you risk de-motivating someone else in the team. At Visible Measures, we have often struggled with this. We are blessed with the best group of folks a nerd like me could ever hope to work with. We have believe in the ideal of trying to be “MORE than fair” with everyone, hoping to anticipate people’s needs and desires so that they never have to really ask for anything. But of course ideals are not always reality. More often than not, we have ended up highlighting people’s ideas, efforts, and accomplishments, and have tried to reward genius with more ownership in the company, as well as with fun little gifts, little treats, bonuses etc. But to be honest, even more important to me as an entrepreneur is that people have a great attitude about creating and building something together and are willing to do whatever it takes to make good things happen. We believe that “good intent” is really something to be treasured and rewarded. Our goal is to try to build the team with the best attitude and the most passion. I know that a lot of great things can happen if you’ve got the right team “on the bus” no matter where you’re headed.
