Startup problems

I don’t mean my problems, but those of startups that started small and have suddenly expanded. One of my two contracts is for a startup whose progress I have followed closely as a friend of mine was very involved with it. There were only a handful of people working and they all fitted into 2 rooms. Gradually they started developing a product, won awards, were asked to provide pilots and realized that they needed to grow up. So they employed marketing and sales personnel and increased the development head count.

Previously the original guys did everything and felt that they owned the process and the product. That, as we all know is a great and giddy feeling. But today that has all changed and there are actual heads for most jobs. The original team has to learn to pass across responsibility and lose some of the control. Not an easy thing to do.

I went in for a meeting and all I could see was lack of communication and minor political in-fighting of who is responsible for what. I mentioned this, saying that it is much easier to notice such stuff when you are on the outside looking in, gave a few examples that I’d seen, and I sincerely hope that they take the comment on board and sort themselves out quickly.