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I agree that there's a missing playbook for that phase of companies... it would be great to see some collected wisdom on "these are the ways that companies run

I agree that there's a missing playbook for that phase of companies... it would be great to see some collected wisdom on "these are the ways that companies run into problems in this phase" and "this is how to prevent / deal with those issues". Startups often have a fun "screw the corporate rules, we're doing it our way!" mentality that's perfect for the Search phase described by Steve Blank here. During my time in a Fortune 500 company, I came to see the reasons for some of the corporate rules and corporate culture... I saw the problems and potential problems that the rules and processes are in place to deal with. If you've never been in a large organization, it's a very different beast than a small one... I imagine that it's tough psychologically to institute rules and processes that you rebelled against in an earlier stage.

analog31 9y ago
Maybe the founder should hire or involve a senior manager as a mentor, long before they reach X employees. The mentor can say: "I see what you're doing here, but here's how a larger company does it, and here's why." I worked for a company that came within inches of imploding at around this point. I noticed that even before hitting that size, they were already going downhill and losing people. So maybe an issue is that a company doesn't do anything different at 40 employees, but the employees get less willing to put up with it, especially if they feel that they're not sharing in the rewards of the company's growth. And the new employees who are coming in, don't share the same "startup fever" and personal loyalty to the founders, that propelled the early employees. A mentor might be able to see this happening and steer the founders in the right direction.
JBlue42 9y ago
Excellent point. The company I worked (not a startup) had existed below 30 people for most of its multi-decade history. They started expanding rapidly the past few years and I came onboard when they were at 60 people. That double in the two years I was there. The higher-ups, who had started and run the company for decades, were strictly against not wanting to "seem corporate" or have too much organization / structure because it was "corporate". Yet, they kept running into ways that the structure would self-organize or that things would stagnant because they weren't being responsive to the large amount of employees below them. They wanted everyone to participate in a vision but the vision was basically "get bigger and don't be corporate" and rather muddied. Everyone I spoke with that had been there more than 5+ years, and that would be honest, had said the major changes in the company 'felt' like they came at 50 people, 70-80 people, and definitely after 100. It was interesting for a while but a bit of a shitshow. All the leadership felt they could run things they same way they always had instead of adjusting to the new paradigm - which is rather 'corporate' in my book.
- thwarted 9y ago
  It was interesting for a while but a bit of a shitshow. All the leadership felt they could run things they same way they always had instead of adjusting to the new paradigm - which is rather 'corporate' in my book. This is a great observation, and one that is frequently overlooked or downplayed, that the true definition of "corporate" is not the existence of process or procedure or anything specific, it is being static and not adjusting to change. Thinking "we don't want rules and process because we want to remain flexible" results in the shitshow, but it's those very processes that enable predictablity in the operation of the organization which leads, paradoxically to some, to freedom. The kind of freedom you really want is freedom from having to think about and frequently deal with all the ("little") things. To wit, if your plan is to hire 30 people for a new department, you want solid HR, finance, and IT onboarding processes so you're not dealing with those things in a bespoke way for each hire, so you can continue to work on hiring the next person. If you don't have good customer service and post-sales support in place, you're going to be constantly fielding issues from current customers when all you want is the freedom to work on getting new customers.
  - JBlue42 9y ago
    Well said. I always thought of it as giving a platform or framework so, as you said, people didn't have to think about it. It's ready to go when a project is about to launch, etc. I also wholeheartedly agree about that w/ the more human processes (HR, onboarding, etc). It was an interesting experience to learn from though my pushes for change and resulting frustrations are probably what ultimately lead to being laid off.

analog31 9y ago

Maybe the founder should hire or involve a senior manager as a mentor, long before they reach X employees. The mentor can say: "I see what you're doing here, but here's how a larger company does it, and here's why." I worked for a company that came within inches of imploding at around this point. I noticed that even before hitting that size, they were already going downhill and losing people. So maybe an issue is that a company doesn't do anything different at 40 employees, but the employees get less willing to put up with it, especially if they feel that they're not sharing in the rewards of the company's growth. And the new employees who are coming in, don't share the same "startup fever" and personal loyalty to the founders, that propelled the early employees. A mentor might be able to see this happening and steer the founders in the right direction.

JBlue42 9y ago

Excellent point. The company I worked (not a startup) had existed below 30 people for most of its multi-decade history. They started expanding rapidly the past few years and I came onboard when they were at 60 people. That double in the two years I was there. The higher-ups, who had started and run the company for decades, were strictly against not wanting to "seem corporate" or have too much organization / structure because it was "corporate". Yet, they kept running into ways that the structure would self-organize or that things would stagnant because they weren't being responsive to the large amount of employees below them. They wanted everyone to participate in a vision but the vision was basically "get bigger and don't be corporate" and rather muddied. Everyone I spoke with that had been there more than 5+ years, and that would be honest, had said the major changes in the company 'felt' like they came at 50 people, 70-80 people, and definitely after 100. It was interesting for a while but a bit of a shitshow. All the leadership felt they could run things they same way they always had instead of adjusting to the new paradigm - which is rather 'corporate' in my book.

thwarted 9y ago
It was interesting for a while but a bit of a shitshow. All the leadership felt they could run things they same way they always had instead of adjusting to the new paradigm - which is rather 'corporate' in my book. This is a great observation, and one that is frequently overlooked or downplayed, that the true definition of "corporate" is not the existence of process or procedure or anything specific, it is being static and not adjusting to change. Thinking "we don't want rules and process because we want to remain flexible" results in the shitshow, but it's those very processes that enable predictablity in the operation of the organization which leads, paradoxically to some, to freedom. The kind of freedom you really want is freedom from having to think about and frequently deal with all the ("little") things. To wit, if your plan is to hire 30 people for a new department, you want solid HR, finance, and IT onboarding processes so you're not dealing with those things in a bespoke way for each hire, so you can continue to work on hiring the next person. If you don't have good customer service and post-sales support in place, you're going to be constantly fielding issues from current customers when all you want is the freedom to work on getting new customers.
- JBlue42 9y ago
  Well said. I always thought of it as giving a platform or framework so, as you said, people didn't have to think about it. It's ready to go when a project is about to launch, etc. I also wholeheartedly agree about that w/ the more human processes (HR, onboarding, etc). It was an interesting experience to learn from though my pushes for change and resulting frustrations are probably what ultimately lead to being laid off.