STEP 2: Gather a founding team and project

When should this step happen? September

Founding Team

Now that you have things clear and have decided to move forward, your first task is to convince two people to join you and live the process together from the beginning. This is non-negotiable: you have to convince two more.

Why? There are many reasons. Here are three:

You are going to face challenges for which you are not prepared; there is nothing wrong with it, but if you do it alone it is dramatically more likely that you will fail and/or get demotivated early.
To create a junior company, the law dictates that there must be at least three people. Bureaucracy is like that: get used to it.
A large part of the value of WaLP is learning about teamwork and leadership. Whatever you do in your life, teamwork will be key. And honestly, it will make you a better person.

Even if you don’t agree, you have to listen to me on this. It is very healthy to question everything. You should also question what is written here. But there are things that are not negotiable and this is one of them: WaLP happens as a team. If there is no team, there is no learning process. So you should already be thinking about which two people you want to be part of this adventure.

What is a team?

Understanding what a team is is one of the keys to the success of any person, because teamwork is the greatest strength of humans as a species.

This is the best definition you will find:

Definition of team: A team is a group of people who share goals, as well as values related to that goal.

That is, in addition to being united by one or more common goals, it is necessary for the team to share a way of thinking, a common language.

This is where the greatest advantage of a team over any lone wolf lies: the team becomes a safe place to work and think differently from how the rest of society thinks.

That’s why it is often said that a team is like a greenhouse: it lets the sun in, but protects from rain, wind and cold.

It is also often said that your team becomes your cultural island. It is an environment with special rules. In addition, words and concepts different from the language of your teachers, your family or your friends are used. And the best thing is that it can be the island and culture that you want.

Once we have this clear, we have to collect the goals that unite the team, as well as the values they share.

All important companies (Netflix, Apple, Google…) have a mission and goals, which all managers and employees must know. But what should your goals and your values be?

When setting team goals and establishing common values, there is a concept that helps a lot.

Do you know Simon Sinek’s golden circle theory? If not, prepare to be amazed.

Golden Circle (Important)

The Golden Circle theory by Simon Sinek has meant an evolution in the way of understanding the activity of any person, team or movement.

Simon believes that you have to conceive everything starting with the why, then defining how it is going to be carried out and finally deciding what it will consist of.

In fact, his book is called Start With Why and explains that first you decide the mission, and then you define the product and the strategy.

People and teams who follow this structure are able to motivate, inspire and excite others, and they survive when problems arise.

As a WaLP team, your Why is probably related to learning, challenging yourself or being your own boss. It may be related to innovating and entrepreneurship.

Then everyone can call it what they want. If it fits better with your way of being, the why can be “killing it at uni”. It can also be “billing a million before thirty”. Or “living the most extraordinary experience in the universe”. The point is that the founders must believe in your why and be willing to give everything for it.

Remember that at this point it doesn’t really matter what the team does. You can be dedicated to chemistry, advertising, event organization or physiotherapy; it’s the same. Everything works, as long as it means a lot to you. Your product or service will change as you learn and evolve, the important thing is that the reason that unites you is strong and meaningful.

Starting with a why makes the team get involved and will turn you into more determined, constant and unbreakable people. No one takes risks for a what (a product). No one questions their habits and principles for a how (a strategy). It is the why that generates extraordinary changes and transformations. A team with a clear why is more solid, makes decisions faster and does not dilute when things go wrong.

The what can fail, your office can burn down, the competition can do the same as you, but no one can steal your why. And if you change your product, strategy or name, it doesn’t matter: you are united by the why.

Setting Team Goals

To be considered a team, people must share goals. Why? Sharing a why is great, but how is this why materialized? In what direction should the team advance? Where do we start?

Goals become the materialization of the why and therefore a common destination for the people who make up the team. We are all very different and have different ways of seeing life, but we can agree on where we want to go and thanks to that we can travel together.

Setting goals is the most important process in the success of any person, team or movement. A group of extraordinary people without a common goal will achieve less than a team with a clear and very inspiring goal.

You are no longer independent people; now you are a team that shares a path to a common place. Each one can have their own personal goals and motivations, but what motivations do you have in common?

In WaLP we use two tools that help the team decide and define its goals:

Learning pledge, or learning commitment
Goal canvas

Learning Pledge (Important)

The learning pledge is a simple, but very powerful and effective tool. It consists of six questions, which each one must answer personally and then share, to find the common denominator that unites all the team members.

These are the questions:

Where do I come from?
Where am I?
Where do I want to go?
What am I willing to do?
How am I going to get there?
How will I know I have arrived?

The pledge will teach you to define your goals, design strategies and define indicators. It is a crystallization tool that serves to capture your goals on paper and be aware of what you are doing with your life.

Let me explain each question individually:

Question 1: Context

Where do I come from?

This question serves to reflect on the past and review the decisions that have led each one to be where they are. It is about explaining why you are the way you are. It is important that you yourself understand your own context before starting to set goals, and it will also help the rest of the team to know you better.

Question 2: Current Situation

Where am I?

This question serves to reflect on the vital point where you are. At this moment in your life, who are you? How do you feel? How old are you, what city are you in, what do you study…?

Question 3: Goals

Where do I want to go?

This is the most important question, so it should take you time to answer it.

Your goals must have meaning for you. On the other hand, it is important that they are challenging; that they are not too easy to achieve, but you feel you can achieve them. It is also important that your goals are specific; they have to be well defined. Use words whose meaning you understand perfectly, and use numbers whenever possible. If you don’t understand your own goals, you won’t understand the direction your life takes.

DOs & DONTs:

Bad: I want a big team

How big is big?

Good: I want a team of 20 people

Bad: I want to be rich.

What does rich mean?

Good: I want to have 100,000€ in my account in 6 months

Bad: I want to be in shape

What do you mean?

Good: I want to run 10km without getting tired

Question 4: Commitment

What am I willing to do?

This is a very important question. When you are part of a team it is important to analyze your degree of commitment. It is also very important that you understand the degree of commitment of all the members of your team. Ideally, everyone should be 100% committed - but if that is not the case, it is important to know. Keep in mind that commitment changes as our values change, so don’t take a colleague’s lack of commitment as an offense. That same colleague may end up being the most committed member of your team.

Question 5: Strategy

How am I going to get there?

Once you know where you want to go, you have to draw up a plan to get to that point. Defining a strategy is difficult, because you have to consider many variables, but it is a very valuable exercise. If you don’t think about how you are going to get to a place, you are unlikely to get to that place.

Try to divide the strategy into stages: by years, courses, months or even weeks. The most important thing is that the strategy makes sense to you. It doesn’t have to be perfect, especially the first few times: as long as it makes sense to you it will be enough to start trying.

Question 6: Indicators

How will I know I have arrived?

Finally, establish indicators. An indicator is a milestone that determines that you have reached your goals, or that you are on your way to reaching them. Without indicators, it is easy to lose focus and not be aware of your progress. In addition, it allows you to break down your goals into small steps that individually are easier to achieve. And above all, it forces you to better understand your goals. Imagine you want to be happy: how will you know you are happy? How will you know you have arrived?

We have been educated to ask ourselves the first and second questions. Our parents, teachers and friends ask us where we come from and where we are, but it is not so common for someone to ask us where we want to go. No one educates us to set our own goals. Even less to question what we are willing to do. No one has taught you to ask such important questions, so it is normal that your first learning pledges are costly and not very specific. Don’t worry, little by little you will train your brain and it will become easier.

We don’t know anything about the future, except that it is built with the actions of the present. That’s why the learning pledge is such a wonderful tool. Personally, I do learning pledges several times a year. This practice has helped me improve my ability to set goals, develop strategies and define indicators.

It is in your hands to train your ability to set your own goals, and establish strategies and indicators that help you build the future you want for yourself.

Tip: Don’t take your pledge as an unquestionable decision. The benefit of setting goals is not having goals, but the exercise itself of reflecting on where you want to go. It is not about limiting and determining your learning, but being aware of your progress. It is not important that everything happens as you wanted, because generally things turn out better than planned.

Once you have all written your learning pledge, it is time to share them. It is a very beautiful process in which you begin to understand your colleagues.

In a team of three people, the whole process should take approximately 60 minutes. 20 minutes for each one to respond individually in their learning diary and 40 minutes to share everything.

In a team of 10 people, sharing the learning pledges can take more than three hours. Half an hour for each one to respond in their learning diary and more than two hours to share everything.

There will surely be laughter, because it can be fun; and it is possible that someone will cry, because they are very personal issues that can touch sensitive fibers. But above all, there will be sincerity and transparent communication that will serve as a basis for forging trust and mutual understanding between the members of your team.

It is recommended that at least one person write everything down. Ideally, everyone should write down everything from everyone. Why? The reflections of the learning pledge are the raw material with which the team will decide its common goals.

The learning pledges help to see the denominators that unite the whole team. It will be the basis for generating a common language. The why of the team will respond to the reflections made that day. So take it VERY seriously.

The First Team Session of the Founding Team

All team meetings must be planned in advance. Especially the important ones. You can’t leave it to chance.

Think: what is the goal of the meeting? What key ideas do you want to convey? What reflections should be made? What emotions do you want to generate? Designing meetings is an art that you will master someday. How? By doing it over and over again.

The first meeting of the founding team is very important, that’s why the walrus designs the dynamics and supervises that they develop according to the design.

In this case, I will give you the design of the first meeting of the founding team, because it is a very important meeting and you don’t have experience in it yet. However, it will be your job to maintain the discipline not to deviate from the topic and respect the times.

As you can see, the meeting lasts three and a half hours. Note that it starts with a check-in and ends with a check-out. The meeting is divided into two blocks, separated by a break. And each slot has an assigned duration.

(10 min) Check in: What animal do you feel like today and why?
Learning pledge
- (5 min) Explanation: what it is and how it is done.
- (20 min) Each one responds to their pledge individually in their learning diary.
Share the learning pledges
- (40 min) First everyone responds to the first question, then everyone responds to the second…
(15 min) Define team values
(30 min) Set goals for the next stage
(15 min) BREAK
(40 min) Do the never!
(25 min) Motorola
(10 min) Check out: What animal do you feel like after the meeting and why?

Establishing the Junior Company

The next step is to establish the junior company. It is something you could not do alone, because the law requires three people.

If this is your first contact with the world of administrative bureaucracy, I have to warn you: it’s terrible.

Instructions for Establishing Your Junior Company

Establishing an association means creating a legal entity. It serves so that the team has a Tax ID to issue invoices and a tax address from which to operate.

To do this, you have to download some documents from the website of the Association Registry of your Autonomous Community.

These are the documents:

Application
Constitution Act
Statutes

You must complete these three documents and submit them to the Public Administration and Justice department of your region, along with the IDs of all founders.

You may wonder, what is a junior company?

A junior company is a type of university association that allows students to operate as a real company while studying at the university. The figure was created in France to promote the proliferation of university startups. Later it was imported to Spain and other EU countries, where it is not very well known.

This legal figure offers many facilities to university entrepreneurs. When a team of students sets out to develop a project, they have to face several barriers. Among other things, they need a Tax ID with which to issue invoices and a fiscal address. To overcome this barrier, the startup can be formalized as a “Junior Company Association” and work from their faculty.

All profits obtained through the association must be reinvested. It is a non-profit organization, so the profit must be re-invested in the association.

We must understand the creation of a junior company as an investment. It is a learning tool; not just a way to get money.

The Name of the Association

Your junior can have whatever name you want; although I recommend that it represents the why of the founding team.

However, from a bureaucratic point of view, the name of the junior will be: “ASSOCIATION _____ JUNIOR COMPANY”. For example, the junior I founded was called “ARTEVERSE JUNIOR COMPANY ASSOCIATION”, because that is what the law requires. Although we always called it “Arteverse”. It’s just bureaucracy.

The Registered Office

I recommend that the registered office be your university. Specifically, the faculty where you study. You don’t need the vice-rector’s permission for this, but it is advisable. After several months a letter will arrive in the name of your association and if you want to be notified, it is convenient to at least notify the janitors.

Board of Directors

In all associations there must be a President, a Treasurer and a Secretary, because the law of creation of associations requires it.

What are the implications? Few. Almost none. That’s why, don’t even think about giving it importance, or even mentioning who is the president and who is not. It is not something to be proud of. It means nothing. Forget it. Seriously: if your achievement in life is going to be presiding over a university association, you can kill yourself now because a really mediocre life awaits you. If you want to stand out in the team, let it not be for your position; instead, try to be the one who treats your colleagues best or the one who bills the most money: those are things to be proud of.

The Purposes of the Association

While completing the statutes, there is a part that can be complicated. It is about the purposes of the association.

A junior company is a peculiar association and it is possible that the official who attends you has never seen one. To avoid misunderstandings, indicate these purposes:

Purposes of the association A. To enable future professionals, currently students, to put into practice the theoretical knowledge acquired during their university studies, in addition to complementing the training received in them. B. To promote entrepreneurial leadership and innovation. C. To help strengthen the bonds of friendship, culture, economics and compensation between students of the Basque Country and the rest of the world. D. To promote equality for groups, including the disabled. E. To promote the Junior Company movement, which pursues greater and better technical and human qualification of its recipients, members and administrators, university students, through training practices, theoretical instructive acts and the acquisition of management experience by students who exercise managerial or advisory functions. F. The stimulation of interest and the business sector, with the creative and innovation capacity of students, trying to be a communication channel between university and company.

Exploiting Your Faculty

Now that the junior is in the process of registration, you can worry about getting an office in your faculty.

Is it necessary for the team to have an office? Yes, it is necessary. Why? A team is not a team if it does not share time and space.

Does the office have to be at the university? Not necessarily, but it makes sense. Why? First, because it is the registered office of the junior. But more importantly: because the uni is a common place for all team members, so it makes sense that it be the epicenter of your activity.

On the other hand, one of the advantages of entrepreneurship at the university is taking advantage of the resources it offers. Not only work and meeting space, but laboratories, prototype manufacturing machinery, video and photography cameras as well as studio sets, computers with all kinds of software and licenses… it’s a gold mine: the lean startup dream.

Getting an Office in Your Faculty

Now you will wonder: and how do I get an office? It’s a very good question!

It is not easy, because over the years, teachers have learned to distrust their students and not to take their initiatives seriously. It is understandable: usually those who set up associations are usually hippies, communists and nerds.

First Step: Find the Decision Maker

The first step is to find the person capable of granting you a space in the faculty.

The organization chart of a faculty can be complex. They are century-old institutions, so the organizational structure is convoluted: coordinators, directors, deans, delegates, subdelegates, rectors, vice-rectors… That’s why, I recommend asking the teacher with whom you have the best relationship who is the boss of the faculty. Or failing that, the person in charge of assigning internships.

Once you find the decision maker, introduce yourself and tell them a little about the project. And if you already knew them, just tell them about the project. They will want written information, so send them a very professional and complete email - if you can prepare a presentation, even better.

It is a good idea to ask for advice. In the world of Start Ups they usually say: if you want money, ask for advice; if you want advice, ask for money. This happens because people like to help, but hate being used. Therefore, ask for advice and make them feel that you value them, not the office.

At a certain point, they will summon you for The Important Meeting. You will know it is The Important Meeting because they will have invited another person, probably the space administrator. This meeting will be your first experience designing client meetings.

Second Step: Design the Meeting

As you already know, meetings must be planned in advance. You can’t leave it to chance. So sit down with the rest of the founding team and think: what is the goal of the meeting? What key ideas do you want to convey? How are you going to introduce yourselves? What are you going to do to be likeable?

Designing meetings is an art that you will master someday. How? By doing it over and over again. There is a tool that is very useful: the empathy map.

It is very simple: you have to consider on one hand what they see, what they hear, what they think and feel, and what they say and do about the person you have to convince. Also consider what benefit this person can have, as well as what disadvantages it may entail.

If everything goes well, you will get an office for the next course.

This office will come in handy for the new team you will recruit in June to enjoy as well. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, you still have work to do.

Projecting

Now that you have two colleagues and you are united by the same why, you have to start working. There are no excuses anymore.

As a founding team, it is important that you start working before thinking about growing the team. You have to prove that you are worthy of leading a team and inspire with what you have achieved.

Projecting is a great word. It comes from “doing projects”. If you do projects, you are projecting. You can also say work, but it is a word more associated with employment and I don’t like that. Everyone complains about work, but these are projects and you are projecting.

Projects should generate four things:

Learning
Billing
Contacts
Team feeling

If it generates all four things, it would be a home run. Ideally, try to achieve at least three of them. For example, if at the end of a project you do the math and you haven’t earned a single euro, but you have new contacts, you have learned and the team is united, it will have been very worthwhile. Honestly, achieving three out of four represents great success, even more so in the first projects.

In my case, in my first project we didn’t earn a cent, we didn’t make contacts and we also ended up arguing. But we learned a lot, and that alone made it worthwhile.

Start with Something Silly

Geniuses start by doing silly things, because it’s the best way to start.

Few people know that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had a small business together when they studied at university. They were clowns: they went to children’s birthday parties to entertain the kids.

It’s a pretty silly business, but you have to start somewhere. Without that experience, they would not have gone on to found Apple and change the world forever.

Your first project is not going to be a hit. It’s impossible. Many things are going to go wrong, because it’s your first project. The important thing is that you learn and the mere fact of having done it.

WaLP Work Methodology

WaLP provides order and structure, without hindering experimentation and learning. It also provides tools whose function is to maximize learning. All members of all WaLP teams commit to following this methodology and using these tools.

Team Sessions

They are meetings that happen once a week. The whole team is obliged to participate in the Team Sessions. They are the minimum that all members must do. They are the only guarantee that the team is still a team. They are sacred. If someone doesn’t come to TS, they are not part of the team.

It sounds a bit harsh, but that’s how things are. These meetings keep the team together and allow them to share the learning that each one experiences separately.

It is a space for you to be a team: not just a set of projects.

Designing Team Sessions

TSs always start with a check-in and end with a check-out. The check is a question that everyone must answer, while the others listen. No one interrupts. No one answers. There is no option to reply: each one has their turn to speak, and then they only listen.

It seems easy, but the truth is that we are very unaccustomed to dialogue: a true conversation in which we listen.

Checks serve to guide the start of the meeting or end in a certain conclusion. If it is a large team, it is possible that it will be divided into groups during certain points of the TS; however, the check-in and check-out are always done among all team members - as well as important decision-making.

Now that you have a team of founders and have been working for a while, you probably need a bigger team. To achieve this, we propose you to hold an event called open call and then personal interviews with the people who have shown interest.