The right team will make or break your web app business, and it is so important to get it right. Treat it like a business, which means having all the main management disciplines covered.
At a minimum you will need, the following disciplines:
- Web developer
- Database developer
- Server administrator
- Interface designer
- User experience designer
- Marketing/ sales manager
- Finance manager
- Operations manager
Now that does not mean you need a team of eight people for your start up! I think the best number of people for a start up is between one and four, any more than that and you lose the special magic that can only come from a small, tight knit team.
The founding members of our web app team are:
- Arif Harbott (Me, The Naked CTO) – in charge of web development, database and server admin, finances
- Scott Sanders – entrepreneur, solutions expert and legendary web app designer and user interface specialist
- Mystery Partner – a senior technology executive in charge of operations and sales
It is such an important part of the business that we are all responsible for marketing; with these blog posts forming part of the marketing campaign.
We all work really well together and are very creative when we have meetings, so it is important that you all bring out the best in each other. It also helps as we have worked on projects together in the past.
We are a remote team, Scott has recently moved to Perth and as such we have regular meetings on Skype and email, so you do not have to all be in the same office, although it is preferable.
One last thing, if you are working on a project part time, then it is important to assign someone with overall control as a project manager. That person needs to be a finisher, someone who will work until the job is done. No surprises then, to find out that, that person is me in this venture, as I have the project management background and will work to get the finer details of the project completed.
