Alex's Tech Thoughts

But its…its easy … to, to talk about… It’s easy to sum it up when you’re just talking about practice. We’re sitting in here, and I’m supposed to be the franchise player, and we in here talking about practice. I mean, listen, we’re talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, we talking about practice. Not a game. Not, not … Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last. Not the game, but we’re talking about practice, man. I mean, how silly is that? 

- Allen Iverson explaining why he is the ultimate Individual Rockstar.

Having individual rockstars at your company is a very troubling scenario. While you want the best people in the best roles, you also want to build a team. Individual rockstars are typically not team players. They are selfish and have egos. You want to build a team that will celebrate the wins and losses together. You want to build a team that is made up of multiple rockstars. You want to build a team that is the best at what they do, not one or two people who shine above the rest (and have bad attitudes).

Alternatively, if you are the only rockstar at your company then you should probably join a company that has more rockstars. When there is a consolidation of talent, all the rockstars join a few big companies. Examples of teams with multiple rockstars are companies like Singleplatform, Path, foursquare, etc.

I use the word “rockstar” in this post, but the word rockstar can be swapped out for any word that describes someone who is very good at their job.

Bottom line: When you hit a critical point in building a company you need to make sure that the culture and individuals (i.e. team) at the company are all very good at what they do (i.e. rockstar status) AND are team players (selfishness and ego can bring your company down in a heartbeat). Just like in basketball, when you have a few team players caring about padding their stats more than winning the game, you are not going to go far in the league.