The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten podcast.

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, Steli and Hiten talk about team member retention in startups.

The success of your startup depends on retaining skilled and talented members of your team. However, it's very common for founders to take team member for granted, and this can often lead to them leaving your startup, which could destabilize the whole business.

Tune in to this week’s episode to hear Steli and Hiten thoughts on why it’s important to retain good team members, the common causes of team members leaving, how to retain them and much more.

Time Stamped Show Notes:

00:00 About today’s topic.

00:41 Why this topic was chosen.

01:26 Steli thoughts on how long he’d want a team member to stay.

01:49 Why some employees choose to work for Close.

02:33 Why you need to create opportunities for your employees.

02:43 Why honesty goes a long way when it comes to retaining people.

03:55 Why real trust is such a scarce commodity in today’s world.

04:34 How trust can help retain goop team members.

05:37 How distractions can hinder team member retention.

06:15 Why happiness is a key reason why team members leave.

3 Key Points:

Talented people want more opportunities, and if you can’t give them that in your company, they will leave.

Honesty goes a super long way when it comes to retaining people.

Honesty builds trust.

[0:00:00]

Steli Efti: Hey, everybody, this is Steli Efti.

 

[0:00:03]

Hiten Shah: And this is Hiten Shah.

 

[0:00:05]

Steli Efti: And in today's episode of The Start Up-

 

[0:00:05]

Hiten Shah: All right, what is it, Steli?

 

[0:00:08]

Steli Efti: Yeah, well, today we want to talk about team member retention in start ups.

 

[0:00:13]

Hiten Shah: I think we like talking about more than just sales and marketing.

 

[0:00:15]

Steli Efti: We just want to bullshit and chat about business and life and hopefully while we're doing that, provide a lot of value to people.

 

[0:00:20]

Hiten Shah: The world's best business podcast.

 

[0:00:21]

Steli Efti: Ooh.

 

[0:00:23]

Hiten Shah: Shit.

 

[0:00:23]

Steli Efti: Oh, shit. We got it.

 

[0:00:24]

Hiten Shah: For people trying to get shit done.

 

[0:00:26]

Steli Efti: Done, yeah. We don't want to give you feedback that's bullshit.

 

[0:00:29]

Hiten Shah: We want you to do your best.

 

[0:00:31]

Steli Efti: When I first suggested this, Hiten was like, "Well, you know, maybe you don't want to be in San Francisco if you want to retain people for more than one or two years." Because the way I pitched the topic was, what do you have to do? How do you ensure that people work with you and work for your start up for longer than just one or two years and then move to another start up? I interview people.

 

[0:00:52]

Hiten Shah: Yep.

 

[0:00:53]

Steli Efti: Every day I look at people's resumes and LinkedIn profiles every day. People that work in the start up world that have worked at a lot of start ups, if I look at their timeline it's always more or less it's like 18 to 24 months.

 

[0:01:08]

Hiten Shah: One to two years.

 

[0:01:10]

Steli Efti: One to two years before they go to the next one, one to two years before they go to the next one. I think that's a huge problem. As a start up founder, I want people to come and work with me. I don't have the foolish expectation that they're gonna stay with my company forever although I want the relationship to be forever, they don't have to work with me or for me or with the company forever but I don't want them to just come to hop to the next ...