Unable to find the dynamic with my student-employees.
Hi!
I'm building a startup with a few other students in my college. We've all agreed on the incentives and monetization plans that are going to follow through at later stages. My dilemma is that whenever they complain about deadlines and keep asking for extensions, I don't know whether to give them a pass or be demanding in this case because
A) They aren't getting paid at the very moment.
B) They have their college commitments as well.
I feel like having a deep discussion about this might ruin our current dynamic because so far we've managed to make quite the progress. Clearly I'm very new to his scene and would like some inputs from you guys.
Thank you!
This why I rarely partner with anyone anymore, they say they are committed and work hard for the first month then slowly disappear. I can only imagine that's even worse using college kids. I have no advice as I haven't solved the issue either. Have had much better success just paying people to do the work.
Won't that sometimes lead to hiring someone who's incentive is the money and not the vision? Is that okay sometimes?
How do you deal with it? Thanks!
I'd say almost everyone's incentive is the money, even the founder's. That's not to say it's the only incentive but it's the one that pays the bills.
Who cares if their incentive is the money? The goal is to get the job done, if they will actually work for money then you are good to go. If they decide to be done there is no fuzzy lines on ownership as they don't own anything since you paid them.
Whereas if you are giving them "ownership" and they slowly fade away, how does that work? It's not as clear of a break. A lot of people want to make money fast, and that's what they expect when joining a startup. Which is ironic cause that's usually the hardest way to make money.
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
As an extension, I want to study a different potential scenario where the employees are being offered direct monetary incentives. My question follows: Whilst wanting to maintain the ideal, healthy employee enthusiasm and dynamic in the company, is it okay to play the monetization card at some level? Passively? If the situation calls for it?
So to summarize: In an environment cultivated with idealism towards the goal, is it okay to let the monetization card creep into the picture from time to time?
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
That answered another dilemma I had in my mind, which was if I was being inefficient by trying to do a lot of things myself instead of spending countless hours finding like-minded people in my circumstance. Thank you for your take on this :)
This comment was deleted 7 years ago
I can very closely relate to that. xD
Sounds like someone's been reading "Think and Grow Rich"
This comment was deleted 7 years ago