High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

A company that grows that rapidly is literally a different company every six months. This means that every 6–12 months the company’s org structure may change. When choosing an organizational structure for your high-growth startup, focus on the next 6–12 months. Don’t try to find the “long-term” solution, as in the long term your company will be com

I am shocked by the absence of M&A relative to what I would expect in the environment. And I would say there’s no question that the big new tech incumbents are not buying enough stuff just on the math. I think it’s just kind of obvious. In the old days, their predecessor companies were far more aggressive at building up their positions for M&am

The problem is, the early adopters are only ever a small percentage of the overall market. And so a lot of founders, especially technical ones, will convince themselves that the rest of the market behaves like the early adopters, which is to say that the customers will find them. And that’s just not true.

This can be a painful conversation, because these people are often naysayers because they’re deeply invested in what the company is. But sometimes that becomes an investment in what the company was. Most people are quite good at staying with that evolution, which is a difficult exercise and an unnatural exercise in some ways. But not everyone is. A

At every company that I’ve seen scale aggressively, a subset of the early employee base will turn over. And that should be considered natural and actually good for that employee base. Many folks just don’t want to work in a larger organization, or they may be looking for something very specific, and if the company no longer serves that purpose they

The reason you’re hiring a new CEO is because there are new skill sets that are critically important. But if someone doesn’t have the founder’s mindset, they’ll be fundamentally, at best, in asset management. They’ll make sure that things keep running, keep going on a trajectory. But the ability to change the curve means taking a risk that a founde

In order to add 500 people a year you need to change the way you approach and scale your recruiting organization, you need to think deeply about employee onboarding, and you need to maintain and evolve your culture. In this chapter we cover these and other shifts required to hire and manage talent.

founders hired a CEO, that CEO is essentially a third founder. And actually, as you’ve read, my view of the key thing in hiring a CEO is to look at it as bringing on a later-stage cofounder.18 That’s actually the key thing that most people don’t think about in a CEO hiring process that’s really important to do.

As you scale, you realize, “Huh, I really need more of these.” And the danger is getting too process-y instead of outlining the objectives so people understand, “Okay, we’re doing this for this reason.” It’s almost like you want to provide more context versus trying to exert more control. Because maybe in a very autocratic, hierarchical, bureaucrat

Typically, the only real “legal” capability of a chair (depending on charter and state of incorporation) is the ability to call for a board meeting independently of the CEO (assuming the roles are split). In early-stage startups, the title “chair” is pretty meaningless; most won’t have a stand-alone chair.