Perseverance, commitment, passion, similar mindsets, common values and deal-maker mentality are qualities needed for successful teams of startup founders, speakers at a panel discussion by OCC Vilnius have suggested.

OCC Vilnius and Startup Scaleup have invited the local startup community to a panel discussion “Building Great Companies” at the Vinted Vilnius office this Monday. Instead of talking about the process of building startups, panelists had a look at the values of people who lead successful companies.

For instance, Jeff Burton, co-founder at Electronic Arts, suggested that emotionally and psychologically, his experience at the board of the company in the 80s was unrewarding and stressful, but the founders were committed and persevere.

“One of the things that kept us together was that we all agreed that we will let Trip Hawkins be our CEO and will subdue our egos. We could always argue with him, but we would always let him make the final decisions. So we kept ourselves away from the feeling that we had to be equal with each other. We knew it was a hierarchical situation, so we accepted that and I think it helped us survive a long time. We had stubborn characters even to the point of not benefiting from staying at the company emotionally and psychologically. Of course, once we went public, we became rich and it all didn’t matter anymore”, – Mr Burton recalled.

Whereas Aleksander Tõnnisson, co-founder Buildit accelerator, stressed the importance of similar mindsets across the board.

“I have friends who have a wire hanging from the ceiling for three years because they can’t agree on which lamp to buy – so just imagine a company having unresolved issues for three years. Every difference in a team is a source of possible conflict, so you need to have similar mindsets with your co-founders. Even Google hires people that are similar to themselves”, – Mr Tõnnisson said.

And Mantas Mikuckas, the COO at Vinted, said his main criteria when looking for people to hire or teams to join is being a deal maker as opposed to deal breaker.

“Everything else doesn’t matter that much because you accept the fact that people are different and it’s okay that they are as then you can see new angles. But there are people who are willing to find a shared value and people who stick to the “my way or no way” thing. You can see that. It’s very risky to be in the business with the latter because you can have a 100-pages long shareholder agreement and you will still certainly have a situation where it’s not clear how you agreed. And if you’re in a team who are deal breakers, you will suffer. For me, being a deal maker is a NR1 personal trait”, – Mr. Mikuckas suggested.

You can find a 360 recording of the event here.

(Photo courtesy of Copictures)