How to Develop an Effective Team- from Levo League

by Alexandra Moncure

What industry has a $100 billion dollar annual spend and is controlled by 2.3 million women? Weddings. Kellee Khalil is thefounder and CEO of Lover.ly, the world’s first visual search and commerce engine revolutionizing the weddings industry. Lover.ly allows brides and grooms to search, save, shop, and share all things wedding in one place through beautiful, curated images from targeted vendors and partnerships.

Khalil began her career in finance before joining her sister’s wedding industry focused public relations agency. While working in the bridal industry and simultaneously helping her sister plan her wedding in 2010, Khalil experienced first hand the difficulty of making a wedding come to life.

On the hunt for the perfect wedding elements—from dresses, shoes and accessories to event decor and wedding vendors—she was also overwhelmed by the millions of pages of wedding content on Google. It was then that Khalil decided to create an all-in-one resource to help brides and grooms discover, search, shop, and share wedding ideas and products in a simple, streamlined, fun and tech-savvy way.

However in order to accomplish this, Khalil needed to build a team that understood her vision and possessed the skills she lacked from a technology perspective to make the vision a reality. She understood that it was important that she not only hire people who possessed the skills she needed, but would also  be a good fit for the company culture she was hoping to build. When building her team, she focused on hiring people who had tremendous amounts of passion, creativity, and interest in the problems that they’re working to solve.

“I think especially in early stage companies, the culture is derived from the founders and the CEO,” Khalil said. “I tend to surround myself with people with skill sets that are far beyond mine. One of my core strengths I think is that I’m good at finding people who are better at things than I am and bringing them around me.”


Read the full article and other articles from Levo League online.