On the 31 st of May, Miguel Alves Ribeiro – Founder & CEO at SheerME – was our guest speaker, whose workshop was entitled “All about people and how to build a dream team!”.
Miguel Alves Ribeiro has a degree in Marketing and Communications and a masters degree in Project Management.
He worked for over 10 years in Telecoms Managing Marketing and Sales teams, before becoming known for cofounding BestTables (today well-known as The Fork) and for being associated with Zomato, as Head of Growth for EMEA & Latin America.
The main topic explored by Miguel was “How to hire, motivate and retain a dream team”. He
started by explaining that building a startup is about our drive and passion for what we’re
building and that must be aligned with the startup’s Culture.
We also understood the importance of hiring the right people which is intrinsically linked to
the “CULTure Fit”. It’s crucial to have in mind “our startup’s culture and to identify if that
person fits in that culture”. Hiring the right people speeds up growth, increases productivity,
reduces costs, as well as boosts “CULTure and brand love”.
From Miguel’s point of view what we should look for in people are hard skills to fulfill business
needs, soft skills adequated to the company’s culture, adaptability to fast change, Passion &
Self-Motivation, and Product/company Buy-In.
Additionally, he underlined that “it’s a no-man’s show”, hence the value of having a cofounder,
because not only will they complement the skills that we may lack, but also help us to leverage
the business.
“How to retain our talent?”, promote a high-performance team culture rather than a “family”
culture; challenge your team every day; promote a culture of trust and flexibility (remote work
if valued); create milestones for ESOPs attribution, these were some of the key principles
highlighted. “The money should be the consequence of your work, not the drive”, emphasized
Miguel.
At the end of the remarkable workshop session, the startuppers had a Q&A time, followed by a
helpful One-on-One mentoring.
During the morning, and when Miguel had started the mentoring, we had an important visit to our working space.
We received a group of the EA-IDEIA 2022 Roadshow, an initiative of the Portuguese Navy and the Ocean Forum, with the support of ANACOM, and the Regional Secretary of Economics, Rui Barreto.
In this regard, the Regional Secretary of Economics underlined that this plan is “in line with the strategy of the Madeira Regional Government, which is to enhance and to boost projects in the area of innovation and in the digital area. We want the Region to be an international ‘hub’ in the technological area and we have great potential at sea”.
Check out all the photos HERE!