Idea, product, team and execution. Those are the four things that every startup must have. As taught in second lecture, when you start something the first and the most crucial decision you make is whom to start it with. Furthermore founders should share a prehistory before they start a company together, otherwise they are just rolling dice. In the book Zero to One, Peter Thiel (author and co-founder of PayPal) writes that the reason why the early PayPal team worked well together was because they were all the same kind of nerds. They all loved science fiction and were obsessed with creating a digital currency that would be controlled by individuals instead of governments. Since then the team has become known in Silicon Valley as the “PayPal Mafia” for the reason that they have gone on to help each other start and invest in successful tech companies.

Startups needs structure to decrease the likeness of team members fighting for power. Peter Thiel lines up three concepts to anticipate likely source of misalignments.
– Ownership: who legally owns a company´s equity?
– Possession: who actually runs the company on a day-to-day basis?
– Control: who formally governs the company´s affairs?

Communication is the key, only on paper do the divisions work smoothly and there are no possible conflicts. This is not the reality and that´s why it´s crucial for startups to have structure and for team members to know each other well before they start the startup.

Link to the second lecture -> https://startupiceland.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/hsst-lecture-2.pdf.