Founders

1/ Decoding the art of scaling can unlock massive business value, help avert painful crises and put you in the top echelon of startup operators.

Knowing when, how and in what dimension to scale your company is one of the most perplexing and often misunderstood job requirements faced by founder/CEOs.

Operating Partner & Head of Crypto Startup School 
@a16zcrypto. 25 years working on frontier tech. 2X CEO, 4 exits & most recently VP Subscriptions at Google.

2/ Here’s the 4 step framework I used to master this essential company building skill:

1. Start by thinking through all of the dimensions of scale that are relevant to your company and product.

4/ 2. Tune your senses, instincts and data collection in order to identify when and in what dimensions to scale in order to create the most value and growth.

Here are a few clarifying questions to ask yourself:

5/ 

- Are customers in love with your product but you can’t deliver it to them fast enough?
- Is the market clearly happening but you’re being out maneuvered by a competitor who is getting to the most important customers first?

6/  3. Take a first principles approach in designing your process to scale.

- Define the key results you are trying to achieve
- Deconstruct the obstacles to achieving your desired results
- Determine whether you have the talent inside the company to accomplish the mission or whether you need to look externally

7/ 

- Put in place a v0.1 team and process designed to capture the opportunity
- Measure your results regularly
- Iterate and improve

8/ 4. Heed these hard learned words of caution to avoid common pitfalls:

9/ 

- Scaling any business or administrative function ahead of achieving a tight lock on product-market-fit will only serve to burn precious capital that you can never get back

10/

- You can almost always catch up if you scale later than is ideal but building out a team or function too early usually results in a redo at best and a further waste of time and precious capital at worst

11/ After one round trip through this process, you will likely feel like a battle hardened scaling pro and can lather, wash, rinse and repeat to scale other parts of your company.

Onward!

3/ Here are a few of my favorites:

Product traction- Growth in users/customers/developers/subscribers, transactions, TVL, etc.
Business- Revenue, cash flow, EBITDA, Net Income, Expenses
Organization- Employees, executives, functions
Geographies- Markets, office locations