Recently I’ve received a bunch of applications from startups, and they all have the same thing in common.

Guess what they’ve come up with…

Yep! — “The NEXT BIG THING!”

Surprise surprise… 99% of the time they’re WRONG.

Why?

There’s a pattern they all share — the teams are consistently homogeneous.

They’re a team of 5 hardware engineers. Exclusively.

Or they’re 3 software engineers. Or they’re a group of designers. Or a team of marketers.

• The team of engineers think their product will sell itself — nope, it won’t!
• The group of designers think their design is amazing — nobody cares!
• The marketers ‘know how to sell anything’ — except for their product!

There’s a simple rule of thumb I have for judging the potential of campaigners:

The team needs to have a variety of complementary skills.

So, if you’re a creator with a wild idea looking for teammates to partner up with… remember this.

Find people who have skills that you don’t.

Hint: Marketing is one of the typical afterthoughts. And I might be biased, but I recommend you think of hiring marketers first!

But this can be easier said than done!

For the longest time, most of my network was made up 95% of marketers...

Software engineers tend to be surrounded by the software engineer community...

Designers frequently gravitate towards one another...

So it's very important to diversify your network.

And I've found LinkedIn to be one of the easiest ways to do that.

And while you're at it... hit me up and let’s get the conversation:

Connect with me on LinkedIn

I also share a bunch of cool stuff on LinkedIn every week.

And while there's some cross-over with these newsletter thoughts... I try to keep it fresh for you!

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