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A start-up’s most valuable asset is its team, as it is the intimate collaboration among these members that brings a product to its completion. Rei Inamoto, the chief creative officer for AKQA, shared a nugget of wisdom that is observed to be pretty accurate among many successful teams: "To run an efficient team, you only need three people: a Hipster, a Hacker, and a Hustler (the Three H’s)." From our own experience working with start-up clients, the teams that have all three kinds of people, hipsters (designers), hackers (engineers) and hustlers (businesspersons), tend to create a better balanced work dynamic that increases the chance of product development, and overall business success. Here is a breakdown of the three types, and the importance of their role in the product development process.
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Hustler
The Businessperson
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Resourceful and financially savvy, the hustlers ensure the product is physically realized beyond just an idea and brought to market. Through meticulously strategizing, relentlessly networking, and tirelessly fundraising, they provide the fuel for a product to launch successfully. To a certain degree, a hustler’s overall business planning has a decisive effect on a product’s survival. A well engineered and designed product could face its demise if the economical supports are unsustainable. The financial sustainability also comes from network building and efficient marketing. Overseeing a broad spectrum of operational functions, the hustlers are no doubt undertaking tremendous responsibilities that exemplify their outstanding leadership skills.
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Hacker
The Engineer
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The technical backbone of any start-up, the hackers offer the necessary and essential engineering solutions to build a product. They are the magicians who can turn abstract ideas and audacious speculations into actual working and functional products that people can rely on. Their constant attempt to challenge the physical and digital limitations establishes a solid foundation for innovation. For most companies, the product is built on the innovative creation of the hackers. The hackers’ specialization in their fields also serves as a reliable source of technical consultation for the hustler and hipster. They offer constant practical checks that ensure the feasibility, functionality, and reliability of a product.
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Hipster
The Designer
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Hipsters are the creative minds who connect the hustler’s business objective and the hacker’s engineering constraints, and most importantly the users’ need through research and iterative design. It is extremely important that they work with hackers and hustlers to make sure the products created are functional, and will also gain adoption within the market. When creating a new product, hipsters use the research and knowledge of broad market insights from hustlers, physical constraints from hackers, and then further conduct user research to develop and refine a new product’s user experience. Also, since having a free market encourages fierce competition, it is extremely important for startups to establish their own unique identities to distinguish their products. Hipsters are natural story-tellers that have the power to create personalized visual languages to help brands and products stand out among their competitors. Overall, hipsters make sure that products resonate with consumers in its utility, accessibility and visual aesthetics, and have the power to transform an average product into a great product.
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Of course, a start-up does not need to have exactly these three people to be successful, as many talented founding teams possess only one or two out of the three aforementioned skill sets. To maximize the potential of success however, at least in our experience, the three Hs framework is a great guideline to refer to when creating a well balanced dynamic in a startup’s founding team.
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Don’t have a designer on the team, but curious to see what you could be missing out on? Feel free to reach out to us here at Spatial Dynamics! We specialize in designing, building, and launching hard-tech products, and would be glad to support you in any way we can in your product development needs.
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