You’ve captured that all-too-familiar startup moment: whirlwind speed gives way to chaos, and suddenly every tiny decision seems to stall the engine. The switch from “doing everything myself” to “designing systems that do it for me” reads not just as smart advice but as startup survival 101. The bit about proactive structure making space for clarity and pace? Brilliantly or rather, practically - powder‑keg stuff. Bottleneck relief, feature triage and playbooks sound like saviours, not preachy must‑dos.
So, tell me-which early signal in your journey made you realise that building systems must come before building features?
I think when I joined tech in the 90s to capture that 🌊 my Co-Founders were operating at scale on the tech side & I was building scale on the GTM side. It was a match made in heaven. They were "what does it look like if we were processing 100x the volume" & I was like "ok, we're killing it with 5 sales people but this won't work with 100 sales people. We need to design for scale" - you look down the table and minds are meeting and faces are smiling - there is a mentality alignment happening right there 🧡 Also - I'm not that interested in product as weird as that might seem 🤣
I know that the dominant message is to grow fast, outpace the competition, and, especially at the earliest stages, achieve exponential traction.
The AI race is a prime example. The marathon-long sprint fueled by seemingly infinite funding rounds, as everyone knows that, at the end of the day, there will only be a few products left standing.
As newsworthy as it is, that's not the reality for the overwhelming chunk of all startups. They read the same news, and may follow the same dreams, and yet they play a very different game.
The game, where sticking to a small team and modest vision gives better odds of succeeding. And in a more likely case of a failure, it's less costly (=more salvageable).
Addition by subtraction is a fabulous strategy for so many earliest-stage startups.
* Pretend you have but a fraction of the budget. How will you plan your MVP?
* Pretend you don't have funds to hire anyone. How will you plan development?
* Pretend you can't build anything (I know, vibe coding :), but pretend). How will you validate your idea?
If all goes fine, you still have funds for the next steps.
And the fear of others taking over your idea? That's largely overexaggerated.
Brilliant comments 👏 thanks for sharing your wisdom 🌟 most of my writing is for any founders - the lost, the fastest growing & everyone in between & so I'm with you on the core massage in the comment ✅
The push for rapid scaling, especially with VC funds, can easily break a startup, whether it’s on the tech side, or on the staffing side. If either goes wrong, or you’re out of runway… the end is the same.
You’ve captured that all-too-familiar startup moment: whirlwind speed gives way to chaos, and suddenly every tiny decision seems to stall the engine. The switch from “doing everything myself” to “designing systems that do it for me” reads not just as smart advice but as startup survival 101. The bit about proactive structure making space for clarity and pace? Brilliantly or rather, practically - powder‑keg stuff. Bottleneck relief, feature triage and playbooks sound like saviours, not preachy must‑dos.
So, tell me-which early signal in your journey made you realise that building systems must come before building features?
I think when I joined tech in the 90s to capture that 🌊 my Co-Founders were operating at scale on the tech side & I was building scale on the GTM side. It was a match made in heaven. They were "what does it look like if we were processing 100x the volume" & I was like "ok, we're killing it with 5 sales people but this won't work with 100 sales people. We need to design for scale" - you look down the table and minds are meeting and faces are smiling - there is a mentality alignment happening right there 🧡 Also - I'm not that interested in product as weird as that might seem 🤣
Thanks for sharing
I know that the dominant message is to grow fast, outpace the competition, and, especially at the earliest stages, achieve exponential traction.
The AI race is a prime example. The marathon-long sprint fueled by seemingly infinite funding rounds, as everyone knows that, at the end of the day, there will only be a few products left standing.
As newsworthy as it is, that's not the reality for the overwhelming chunk of all startups. They read the same news, and may follow the same dreams, and yet they play a very different game.
The game, where sticking to a small team and modest vision gives better odds of succeeding. And in a more likely case of a failure, it's less costly (=more salvageable).
Addition by subtraction is a fabulous strategy for so many earliest-stage startups.
* Pretend you have but a fraction of the budget. How will you plan your MVP?
* Pretend you don't have funds to hire anyone. How will you plan development?
* Pretend you can't build anything (I know, vibe coding :), but pretend). How will you validate your idea?
If all goes fine, you still have funds for the next steps.
And the fear of others taking over your idea? That's largely overexaggerated.
Brilliant comments 👏 thanks for sharing your wisdom 🌟 most of my writing is for any founders - the lost, the fastest growing & everyone in between & so I'm with you on the core massage in the comment ✅
The push for rapid scaling, especially with VC funds, can easily break a startup, whether it’s on the tech side, or on the staffing side. If either goes wrong, or you’re out of runway… the end is the same.
Thanks for sharing