Huma Siraj
Early stage startup success frequently boils down to a few crucial behaviors. Not vision. not financing. Not a product. are the recurring practices that a team develops throughout the initial months. These minor trends influence how choices are made, disagreements are settled, and momentum is generated or stagnated.
These ten behaviors frequently go unnoticed yet have a significant impact.
1. Establish quick priorities at the beginning of each week.
Verify that high-performing teams frequently align. Drift can be prevented with a 10-minute Monday standup (live or async) that is entirely focused on the week’s most important issues. This isn’t a status report. It’s a tool for coordination. Clarifying who is pushing what forward can be accomplished with only one weekly shared Google Doc or Slack thread.
2. Before debating anything, put it in writing.
When everyone writes down their thoughts beforehand, discussions proceed more quickly and thoroughly. For important decisions, Stripe famously relied on written memos, which helped to decrease groupthink and explain reasoning. This tendency stops dominating speakers in small groups from directing discussions without question.
3. Always Close the Loop
Closing the loop on a bug report, a sales follow-up, or a customer communication may seem simple, but it fosters trust. Early teams are more operationally tight when this becomes second nature. Colleagues and users begin to believe that words are followed by action. That simplifies everything else.
4. By default, show rather than tell
Show a spreadsheet, a short Loom video, or a mockup in place of thirty minutes of discussion about a problem. A rough explanation is preferable to an unclear one. The founders of Figma and Superhuman established this practice early on because they felt that their teams worked more quickly and that feedback loops were shortened by visible, tangible communication.
5. Conclude Every Week With A Minimalist Retro
Even a quick 15 minute end of week review is beneficial for early teams. What was effective? What didn’t work? What didn’t feel right? You don’t require sophisticated equipment. Simply write down a few bullet points and one enhancement to attempt the following week. Little victories build up faster than you would think.
6. Talk About Your Communication Style, Not Just Your Content
Most teams don’t discuss their communication style until tension is high. However, small discrepancies in communication style cause conflict at an early stage. Do you make choices using email or Slack? Are async responses anticipated in a matter of hours or days? If these tendencies are not addressed right once, they can subtly undermine trust. For a little more in-depth information on the significance of excellent team and external communication, see our Startup Communication & Negotiation Guide.
7. Identify the Difficult Things Aloud
It’s easy to avoid pointing out hard realities, such as a failing strategy or a swaying cofounder dynamic. On the other hand, high-trust teams normalize early surface conflict. It does not imply excessive sharing. It just entails speaking the silent part aloud before it turns into animosity.
8. Maintain the Calendar’s Sacredness
In the beginning, teams frequently schedule too many meetings or, on the other end of the spectrum, only convene during a fire. Establishing a rhythm is facilitated by a regular cadence, such as a retro every two weeks or a product review every Friday. Bureaucracy is not what rituals are. They serve as a safeguard against mayhem.
9. Restrict Who Can Touch What
There are too many founders who try to “co-own” everything. The best teams, however, make explicit demands about ownership. Marketing copy belongs to whom? Who makes decisions about design changes? Clarity is produced by ownership. Having clarity lowers churn. It just implies someone makes the decision; it doesn’t mean people cease working together.
10. Publicly Celebrate Any Progress, No Matter How Small
Momentum is brittle. especially throughout the initial year of a startup. Morale is raised by teams that make it a practice to share victories, no matter how minor. Bonuses and parties are not necessary for this. Everyone can be reminded that progress is being made with a weekly internal email or a straightforward Slack thread.
