(Excerpt from The Star Principle by Richard Koch)
Unless a business remains essentially the vehicle of the founder – and usually therefore very small – its business idea and character derive from the interactions of up to 20 early employees.
… The founders and first employees are, in my book, all entrepreneurs. It’s their individual and collective energy that makes the firm viable and distinctive.
… Entrepreneurship is people, plural. It’s the first twenty or so employees, not the first one or two or three or four. It’s the team. It’s the spirit and balance of the team. There is the firm’s DNA. It doesn’t belong to the founder, however big a personality. Often, the more dominant the founder, the bigger the problem, and the more of a handicap the co-founders and employees have to overcome.