High Growth Handbook: Scaling Startups From 10 to 10,000 People

by Elad Gil

Elad: Another thing that I’ve seen a lot of companies do as they scale is implement more day-to-day processes. Because there’s a huge difference between running a 100-person company and a 1,000-person company, particularly if you have a large product and engineering org. Are there two or three things like that that you view as the most crucial processes as a company starts to grow, and that help free up executive time? Claire: Yes. I would say that it’s a combination of what I would call “operating structures,” which are things like documenting your operating principles and processes. Operating structures are not tied to any one particular process, but instead explain, “This is what we expect of ourselves, in terms of how we work.” And when you document things like that, new leaders, new managers, new people in the organization can say, “Ah, this is what’s important. Let me adapt my behavior as we scale to follow along in this structure.” And then you have things like launch processes or what-have-you. One thing I’ve observed is that you can’t make too many things at a company mandatory. You really have to be judicious about the things that you’re going to require, because there just can’t be that many. There’s probably something related to performance and feedback. There’s probably something related to whatever your planning process is. And then there’s a few day-to-day tactical things, like a launch review. But you can’t have that many and you can only have one at each l...