One rocketship bias of this article appears to be lack of "focus on the customer" versus "strive to be the most valuable, but least critical." The latter can b

One rocketship bias of this article appears to be lack of "focus on the customer" versus "strive to be the most valuable, but least critical." The latter can be good core advice anywhere ("pager duty" stuff at any company causes burnout for ICs and EMs) but customer traction is only really given to you on a plate at a rocketship (e.g. after Series A/B). Most of the piece is about scaling rather than understanding the user / customer and evolving the product ... a more balanced advice essay is going to talk more about gaining, keeping, losing, and re-gaining traction versus just scaling a sprawling org.