Gordon's chapter on team-building is structured around a central observation: the team is the most important factor in entrepreneurial success, ahead of the idea, the market, and the timing. He cites the standard investor position that a great team will figure out how to make a weak idea work or pivot to a better one, but a weak team will fail to execute even a great idea. He identifies several specific principles for building the right entrepreneurial team. Complement, do not replicate: the co-founder or early team members you need are people whose strengths cover your weaknesses, not people like you. Two visionary big-picture thinkers with no operational detail orientation will produce an exciting business that never ships. The team needs the skills the business actually requires, not the skills the founder already has. Values alignment is more important than skill alignment: skills can be learned; values rarely change. A technically brilliant team member who does not share the business's core commitments around honesty, quality, or customer service will cause damage that is difficult to undo. The early team sets the culture; culture is the hardest thing to change later. Define roles and expectations explicitly: most early team conflicts arise not from bad intent but from misaligned expectations about who is responsible for what and what the standards are. Explicit role definition and clear expectations prevent most of these conflicts. Hire character, train skill: for most early-stage positions, the specific technical skill matters less than the person's attitude toward learning, working with others, and taking ownership of outcomes. Skills are learnable; character is not.