Winning founding team

Ideal founding team as seen in the eyes of the investors consists of:
- sales person
- tech person
- product/marketing person

Ideally all three worked together before and they are all experts in their respective fields.  In best scenario they are dedicated to the project, carry no extra baggage and they're willing to move anywhere and work together.  An extra plus is that they all have startup experience.

Obviously ideal setup is tough to achieve, however it is useful to think about it when founders try to assess their chances with investors, or at least think through how to react to various questions that are going to be raised when talking to investors.

For example, a team of three hackers with no business talent or sales experiences will have trouble persuading investors to invest. Similarly, two pals fresh from college will have trouble persuading investors that they have innovative product that they developed on Excel macros and that is going to scale to conquer the world.

There is a universal answer to the problem: you can always hire the missing talent. The only catch is that the founders should be aware of the  skills they are lacking and how do they plan to address the issue.

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