Building a New-Business TF

A new-business TF requires every single member to be an owner. The moment the company becomes "the other," the TF starts to harden.
In a small-headcount TF, the company cannot be othered, and you shouldn't think that way. Each member is a pillar, a window, a living room. So saying the TF is lousy is saying I am lousy; saying the TF is rigid and boomer-ish is saying I am that way. In a big organization you can blame others or flexibly hide behind your title — in a new-business TF you cannot.

So people matter most.

People who fit a new-business TF are different. You need people for whom the attitude above is taken for granted. It's not something you learn — some people are just built that way. Like the old man carving pestles, there are unlikeable and sensitive people who do the jobs no one asked them to do, not for someone else's praise or recognition but simply so as not to feel ashamed of themselves. Not because they are better people, but because they are more suitable people. Of course, in a normal organization, not every member can be an owner. Members who quietly do what's assigned are important and admirable too. There's no debate there — how do you even compare humans and elves? It's just that, the way a founder and a CEO require different capabilities, a new-business TF requires its own different calibration.
If someone thinks "too many captains send the boat into the mountains," their thinking isn't wrong. It's just that, if their organization is a new-business TF, they are in a role that doesn't suit their temperament, and the organization simply hired inappropriately.  

Every single member of a new-business TF must be able to captain the boat. Someone has to be able to see the forest and steer toward the mountain; someone has to be able to steer out to sea, toward the horizon.

The welfare in such a new-business TF is not work-life balance. These people do not chase comfort, convenience, or money. For that kind of folk, the best welfare is the people around them. Experiencing the attitudes of teammates who make your thinking crisper under tension and make your execution tighter — that's where they find fullness and satisfaction and can share it.

So in a new-business TF, the one thing that matters is: people, people, people — each single one of them.