Artificial Intelligence, Startups and Building Effective Teams
We had the pleasure of hosting Jacob Colker at our “Forum Forum”, a regular opportunity for our consultants to explore big ideas via conversation with business leaders. At our January Forum Forum, we asked Jacob Colker to join us at family-owned Seattle Restaurant, Omega Ouzeri for a delicious meal and a conversation on building team culture, especially in the intense dynamic of a start-up. We enjoyed learning about Jacob’s hiring process, the rapidly changing world of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Jacob’s enthusiasm for helping Founders get their ideas off the ground surrounded by carefully selected individuals.
About Jacob Colker
Jacob is a managing director of AI2, the Paul Allen Institute For AI, a Seattle-based startup incubator with big visions of providing initial funding and support for startups in the realm of AI. At AI2, Jacob hires founders to join the incubator as well as individuals to round out start-up leadership teams. Jacob is also an affiliate instructor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Washington Foster School of Business teaching MBAs, including Forum Solutions’ own Michelle Godwin.
Jacob, an entrepreneur at heart, started his first company, a shadow porter service at a hotel, while on vacation with his family at age 10. That hunger for entrepreneurism led him to his own start-up as an adult, a micro volunteer platform called The Extraordinaries, which gave him the start-up itch.
After several years of working for and investing in start-ups on his own, he joined AI2. Today, he helps founders incubate their ideas and build their teams with complementary individuals. We asked Jacob how he builds leadership teams and company cultures in rapidly changing startup environments. Below are some of his insights:
Build the Team Intentionally
When a new entity is being spun up the key is to unlock the value in the idea. The Founder is everything in a Start-up and needs to be surrounded by those who complement their skills and can fill in gaps. The success of a start-up can be hinged on having a team that works well together in experience, personality, domain expertise, and determination (“grit”). In Jacob’s view, Venture Capitalists look for 10 things in a Start-up: team, team, team, team, team, team, team, team, team, and team.
Assess through Observation
By the time Jacob interviews someone for a startup team, he has already been evaluating them for a couple of weeks. He observes their level of flexibility and creativity during the scheduling process and considers the quality of the questions asked by the candidate. Very importantly, he analyzes and checks a candidate’s references. If a candidate is not willing to share their prior boss as a reference or cannot come up with at least two prior colleagues as references, that is telling. When calling references, Jacob observes hesitations in answers and the enthusiasm of the reference when speaking about the candidate.
Seek Adaptability and Agility
Although it is hard, he holds the quality bar very high and tries to eliminate confirmation bias. He is looking for compatibility, adaptability, and agility “because to have an A-team on a B-idea will work out, but a B-team on an A-idea is doomed.”
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