‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups

People who are successful at fast-growing companies:

• Are able to adapt to the chaos and uncertainty of adding new people
• Redefine their jobs on a regular basis (every 3-6 months)
• Accept the uncomfortable emotions that come when teams double in a short period of time

• Help people understand it's normal to feel anxious or scared. This is what they should expect during rapid growth.
• Encourage them to ride their emotions out and postpone acting on their emotions when new people come aboard.
• Set up 1:1s after a month to see how eveyone is handling/is affected by growth.
• Point to a new Lego tower that needs to get built, and help people picture the reality of their next job.

This is where everything gets hard and you go from being a family to being a company.

This stage is about developing the right principles. Write down your mission, values and philosophies. Make it clear who you are and how you do things.

Talk about those things constantly. When it feels like you're repeating yourself every day, that's probably when you're communicating just enough.

If you want your team or company to have certain values, to care about certain things, to act in certain ways, the time to do it is in these first 200 people — or the first 100 if possible. After that, a lot of other stuff takes hold.

Hiring is a network effect. The first 100 people you hire will define the next 200.

Whatever your company looks like at this stage is how it will be when you're older and bigger.

After 200 employees, any shift in culture requires a lot of work from all leaders within the company. However, when you see a trend over time that you don’t like, you need to aggressively manage it. Otherwise you can end up with some really bad habits as a company.

1. Write down the qualities you want your company to embody.
2. Write down your vision — what you’re doing in the world.
3. Communicate these things again and again, all the time. You can’t overcommunicate these ideas.
4. Focus on hiring quality people rather than speed. Don’t lower your bar because you need to grow faster. It will come back to bite you.
5. Fire people. Just do it!
6. Hire amazing leaders as early as you can and help them grow their capabilities as the company grows.
7. Prioritize principles over process.
8. Keep giving away your Legos! And tell everyone around you to do the same. It’s going to be okay.