Startups need the right people

• Sukanya Bharati
• August 21, 2024
• Blog
• #startups
• 0 Comments

I worked in a late stage startup a while ago.

My job as head of products was to help scale #product and business.

At the time that meant going from a legacy product to #saas.

Changing product dev processes,

Streamlining 20+ code branches to 2,

Going from low license and high services costing to purely subscription revenue with little bit of services.

Going from only doing direct marketing and lead generation to working with industry analysts and getting them to praise our product.

This was really tough to achieve, but it worked over time.

We assembled a core team that drove the change hard.

With some early wins we built momentum.

We got the support of key leaders willingly or not so…

All of this meant – the company was poised for scale.

It actually started growing rapidly for some time.

Unfortunately it did not continue that way…

All the changes threatened some of the existing leadership,

While senior leaders were in general supportive, mid-level leaders had to change their way of operating,

Their ways of working…

Ways they got compensated,

Way they liked to make decisions,

All of that meant there was a resistance building up to this change,

Managing the politics and organizational conflicts became a full time job.

And I hated it so much that I decided to move on…

If you want to grow your #startup or #business rapidly

First ask yourself, if you have the right people…

If you don’t, are you willing to hire people who can help.

If you have the wrong people, can you let them go.

People who know how to build and scale right.

Usually don’t like to work with people who want to maintain status quo at all costs.

Vested interests or company interests?