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

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.

Having some early wins is certainly helpful too. So somewhere in the 60- to 90-day time period, the new COO should implement a few things that make everybody go, “Oh wow, this is cool. This is helping. We now have this new process that makes us perform a lot better and has reduced wasted effort in the wrong areas.” Having

If done right, after 4–8 weeks of self-auditing you will start to open up time to focus on strategy and the other key components of your company. You need to be focused on the most important things—not on everything. You also need the ability to take a step back and look at the big picture. If you spend all your time on the tactical brass tacks, yo

As an active founder, you may want to sell up to 10% of your holdings (or up to $5 to $10 million, whichever is lower) in a secondary transaction, as part of a round, a stand-alone sale, or a tender (more on each of those below). If you sell more than 10% (especially if you’re still operationally involved with your startup), it will be perceived as

One technique I learned, actually from Brian Chesky at Airbnb, is to go find the five best people in Silicon Valley that do that role, and just have coffee with them. And just chat. In that dialogue, I think you form an ability to benchmark the differences between an A+ and a B+, so that when you meet new candidates, actual candidates, you can tria

When you take care of yourself, you’ll be much better equipped to tackle the next key leadership tasks of a CEO: managing your reports (next section) and managing your board of directors.

Most of the time there is no “right” answer and org structure is really an exercise in pragmatism. That is, what is the right structure given the talent available to your company, the set of initiatives you need to pursue, and your company’s 12- to 18-month time horizon?

We used to have a saying at Venture Hacks: “Valuation is temporary. Control is forever.” Whoever has control can effectively end up controlling your valuation later. Never give up control.

Product managers should also function as the “buffer” or shield that protects engineers and designers from other internal and external parties. Sales and marketing people will always want to meet engineers directly to lobby for their favorite features, while customers will want to have a conversation directly with engineering. Product management sh