"Entrepreneurship is a team sport," and other launch tips in Entrepreneur Magazine

Entrepreneurship is a team sport. Here's an excerpt from the full article entitled  5 Things You Must Do to Successfully Launch a Business , which ran in both print and online at Entrepreneur Magazine:

Perhaps the most critical step in the evolution of your startup is assembling a team that works well together and can deliver the goods. "Many good entrepreneurs are by nature connectors of people, so they have strong networks, which puts them at an immediate advantage," notes Mark Coopersmith, a longtime tech entrepreneur and senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business.Your teammates need to share your ideas about how the business should be run. "The crucial element here is that entrepreneurship is a team sport," Coopersmith says.

"Build the team early, and build it around shared values. Because if you bring on employees and partners and you agree upon common values, you can use those values to come to decisions."

Coopersmith invokes the late Peter Drucker, the management guru who 60 years ago wrote that corporations have only two core functions: marketing and innovation. In other words, businesses exist to build and sell product. "I would ensure my team comprises those two skill sets," he says.Additionally, you need a team that's pragmatic and able to work together when times get tough. Sit down with critical team members and plan for all contingencies. "What happens if your partner becomes disabled? Sick? Divorced?" Green asks. "Or suddenly the business does poorly, and now we have to go to a bank? You've got to decide those things beforehand, so that it's not you or me, but it's us..."

Read more: 5 Things You Must Do to Successfully Launch a Business  on entrepreneur.com.