Startup mode

Paul Graham beat me to it with his latest essay Founder Mode (September 2024) where every line rings true to me. Give it a read after, or before, my post.

About a month ago, Len and I did an all-hands presentation to our team, underscoring how our rapid success during the early years of COVID (2021-2022) had gradually led us away from the very principles that made us successful.

We emphasized the need to get back to startup mode.

I’ve had a nagging feeling since the start of this year that we’d lost our way.

After months of planning, we decided on the day of our presentation to scrap everything and refocus on one clear objective:

How can we provide more value to our tens of thousands of paying customers?

Over the past few years, we’d spent far too many of our company’s resources on attracting new users rather than serving the ones who pay us every month.

Not only that, but a byproduct of our revenue growth was us thinking — and then acting — like we were bigger than we were.

We over-hired, put in place corporate policies like performance reviews, had far too many internal policies, stopped communicating across teams as well as we had in the past, built features for growth rather than for the users we had today, crossed every t and dotted every i before we released new things, and generally got slow and complacent.

Despite our team tripling in size since 2020 (before our COVID growth spurt), we were objectively doing a worse job in the eyes of our paying users at nearly everything across every department.

Myself included.

This is where PG’s essay really resonates with me.

The startup community often promotes the idea that as a company grows, the CEO should delegate more and distance themselves from day-to-day operations to build a successful, self-sustaining business. But in our case, and I’m sure the same is with most startups, nothing could be further from the truth.

Implementing a corporate hierarchy in a company as small as ours just to "act big" does far more harm than good.

I operate best when I have my hands in everything, and when I know everything that is going on at Podia, because only then with the most information can I make the best decision. But as the past few years ticked by, I found myself knowing less about what was going on in my own company because I thought that distancing myself was what you did as you grew.

Turns out that this was a huge mistake, and I’m happy to see that PG is bringing awareness to his much larger audience that it’s not the case for others, too.

Most of my career success has come from trusting my gut and acting quickly, and I’m returning to that approach.

I know I’ll make mistakes, but I’d rather reassert control over Podia’s future rather than watch it slowly slip away.

Small teams may have few advantages over large teams with big budgets, but one key difference can be game-changing: operating in startup mode.

Ten years into founding Podia, I’ve never been more excited to see what our team can achieve with this major mindset shift and a singular focus on delighting our paying users.

While we’re only a month in, I can tell you with full conviction that going back to startup mode has already made a world of difference. It feels like we have a ton of momentum behind us and that we’re operating like we did back in 2019. People are engaged, work is getting done faster, and the company feels vibrant and alive.

Only time will tell how this will all play out, but I wouldn’t bet against us operating in startup mode.