High Growth Handbook

Founders

• Evolving roles: Adjust your role as founder continuously as the company scales; what worked at 10 people won’t at 100 or 1,000
• Key transitions: Navigate key transitions from founder to CEO by developing new skills in management, delegation, and planning
• Management structure: Establish clear management structures early; flat organizations don’t scale beyond 20-30 people
• Leadership team: Build your executive team before you desperately need them; hire ahead of growth
• Decision making: Create explicit decision-making frameworks as you scale to maintain speed while including right stakeholders
• Priority setting: Focus relentlessly on 2-3 top priorities and communicate them consistently
• Operational cadence: Establish regular operational rhythms with clear meeting structures and decision processes
• Cultural reinforcement: Codify and reinforce culture through hiring, firing, and promotion decisions
• Scaling communication: Implement formal communication channels as informal methods break down at scale
• Personal development: Invest in your own development as CEO through coaching, mentorship, and peer networks

CEO

• Time allocation: Spend your time on what only you can do: setting vision, hiring key leaders, securing resources, and making critical decisions
• Delegation approach: Delegate everything else; your job is making others successful, not doing their work
• Strategic vision: Clearly articulate where the company is going and why it matters
• Board management: Manage your board actively rather than reactively; prepare thoroughly and maintain relationship between meetings
• Fundraising strategy: Approach fundraising strategically with clear timing, targets, and thesis
• Crisis leadership: Lead decisively during crises; be visible, communicate clearly, and focus on solutions
• Personal bandwidth: Guard your calendar ruthlessly; your time is the company’s scarcest resource
• Information gathering: Create systems to stay informed without micromanaging; use skip-level meetings and structured reporting
• Decision framework: Develop clear frameworks for which decisions you make versus delegate
• Succession planning: Always be developing potential successors for yourself and key executives

Organization

• Organizational design: Design your org structure around your strategy, not personalities or legacy
• Centralization balance: Balance centralization and decentralization based on your stage and needs
• Functional vs. divisional: Choose functional organizations for speed and alignment in early stages; shift to divisional as you scale and diversify
• Reporting structures: Create clear reporting structures with appropriate spans of control (5-8 direct reports)
• Matrix challenges: Avoid matrix organizations until absolutely necessary; they add significant complexity
• Reorganization approach: Execute reorganizations quickly and clearly; communicate the why, what, and how
• Role clarity: Ensure every role has clear responsibilities, decision rights, and success metrics
• Organizational debt: Address organizational debt (misaligned teams, unclear responsibilities) as aggressively as technical debt
• Org evolution: Plan for organizational evolution with growth; revise structure every 6-12 months during hypergrowth
• Transition management: Manage transitions carefully with clear communication and support

Board

• Board composition: Construct your board thoughtfully with complementary skills and experiences
• Size management: Keep your board appropriately sized (5-7 members) for effective decision making
• Meeting preparation: Prepare thoroughly for board meetings with pre-reads distributed well in advance
• Strategic focus: Focus board discussions on strategy, not operational reviews
• Material preparation: Send board materials 72+ hours in advance; include key metrics, challenges, and decisions needed
• Meeting structure: Structure meetings effectively with clear agendas and time for strategic discussion
• Communication cadence: Maintain regular communication between meetings; avoid surprises
• Conflict management: Address board conflicts directly and professionally
• Independent directors: Add strong independent directors who bring specific expertise
• Advisory relationships: Develop advisory relationships with board members between formal meetings

Executive Staff

• Executive profile: Hire executives who have scaled beyond where you need to go next
• Team composition: Build a complementary executive team with diverse strengths and perspectives
• Hiring process: Use rigorous, consistent hiring processes for executives with extensive reference checks
• Onboarding importance: Invest heavily in executive onboarding; first 90 days are critical
• Performance management: Set clear expectations and give direct feedback to executives early and often
• Team dynamics: Foster healthy executive team dynamics with trust and productive conflict
• Compensation strategy: Design executive compensation to align with company goals and retain key talent
• Succession planning: Require succession plans from all executives for their key roles
• Development investment: Invest in developing your executives; they need coaching too
• Removal decisions: Make executive removal decisions quickly when necessary; delays are costly

Growth

• Growth mindset: Develop a growth mindset throughout the organization; set ambitious targets
• Metrics focus: Focus on the right growth metrics for your business model and stage
• Growth team: Build dedicated growth teams with clear ownership and accountability
• North Star Metric: Establish a North Star Metric that aligns the entire company
• Experiment culture: Create a culture of rapid experimentation with clear hypotheses and measurements
• Channel expansion: Systematically expand acquisition channels as existing ones saturate
• Scalable processes: Build processes that scale with your growth rather than break under pressure
• International expansion: Approach international expansion strategically with clear market prioritization
• Growth constraints: Identify and systematically remove growth constraints before they limit you
• Sustainable growth: Focus on sustainable growth drivers rather than short-term tactics

Scaling Culture

• Culture definition: Define your culture explicitly in terms of behaviors, not just values statements
• Hiring alignment: Align hiring processes with cultural priorities; screen rigorously for cultural fit
• Cultural reinforcement: Reinforce culture through recognition, promotion, and when necessary, firing decisions
• Communication scaling: Scale communication systematically as you grow with all-hands, emails, and documentation
• Decision making: Establish clear decision-making frameworks that embody your cultural values
• Cultural champions: Identify and empower cultural champions throughout the organization
• Founder presence: Maintain appropriate founder presence to reinforce cultural values
• Subculture management: Manage emerging subcultures carefully; allow appropriate variation while maintaining core values
• Culture measurement: Measure culture with regular surveys and feedback mechanisms
• Cultural evolution: Allow culture to evolve appropriately as you scale while preserving core elements

Common Scaling Challenges

• Hiring velocity: Build recruiting capacity before you need it; hiring constraints will limit growth
• Communication breakdown: Address communication breakdowns with deliberate processes and tools
• Middle management: Develop effective middle managers; they become critical as you scale
• Process balance: Find the right balance between process and agility; too little or too much process can be fatal
• Decision bottlenecks: Identify and eliminate decision bottlenecks through clear frameworks and delegation
• Growth plateaus: Expect and plan for growth plateaus; they require different strategies than growth phases
• Organizational debt: Address organizational debt regularly; outdated structures create friction
• Burnout prevention: Prevent burnout with sustainable pace and explicit recovery periods
• Competition response: Respond to competitive threats strategically, not reactively
• Market evolution: Anticipate and adapt to market evolution; what got you here won’t get you there

Scaling Yourself

• Time audit: Conduct regular time audits to ensure you’re focusing on highest-leverage activities
• Delegation mastery: Master the art of delegation; give outcomes, not tasks
• Learning velocity: Maintain high learning velocity through reading, networks, and structured reflection
• Coach engagement: Engage coaches and mentors appropriate to your stage and challenges
• Peer networks: Build peer networks for support, learning, and perspective
• Energy management: Manage your energy, not just your time; prioritize physical and mental health
• Decision frameworks: Develop personal decision frameworks to maintain consistency and reduce fatigue
• Personal board: Create your own personal board of advisors for guidance and accountability
• Strength leverage: Double down on your strengths rather than fixing all weaknesses
• Work-life integration: Find sustainable work-life integration; marathon pace beats sprinting

Key Takeaways

1. Role evolution: Continuously evolve your role as founder/CEO as the company scales
2. Executive team: Hire executives who have operated successfully at your next scale
3. Board management: Manage your board actively as a strategic resource
4. Organization design: Design your organization around strategy, not personalities
5. Growth focus: Maintain relentless focus on the right growth metrics for your stage
6. Culture reinforcement: Reinforce culture through hiring, firing, and promotion decisions
7. Decision frameworks: Create clear decision frameworks to maintain speed at scale
8. Communication systems: Build systematic communication as informal methods break down
9. Time allocation: Allocate your time ruthlessly to the highest-leverage activities
10. Sustainable pace: Set a sustainable pace for yourself and the organization; hypergrowth is a marathon