Innovate the Product. Don’t Innovate the Company.
You know what kind of sucks?
If you’re even moderately successful as a founder, you pretty quickly stop doing the thing that got you into this in the first place.
A recent piece in Psychology Today “The Psychology Behind Why Founders Fail as They Scale” digs into this from a different angle: as startups grow, founders have to evolve their identity from innovator to business builder to leader, and that shift is where many struggle. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/blindspotting/202512/the-psychology-behind-why-founders-fail-as-they-scale
It’s not about strategy. It’s about psychology, and blind spots that kick in when the job changes faster than your sense of self.
Here’s what I see in my own conversations with founders:
Almost every brilliant founder I talk to is absolutely dialed into building a great product. They listen to customers, iterate fast, find product/market fit, and jump in to solve every problem. They put everything they have into their startup.
Then things change:
After the very first phase, your job is not to keep doing what you love most.
Once in awhile you might get to jump back in and help your product team, or your marketing team, or your sales team, but after a certain point pretty early on your job is to build the company.
That means:
Hiring the right people in the right roles
Putting predictable processes around unpredictable work
Managing investor relationships and capital strategy
Having standard docs in place where they’re expected
Letting go of the things you were doing so others who know better can take them on
Most founders didn’t start a company to optimize org charts or design approval workflows. That’s “boring” stuff, until it isn’t.
Some founders ignore this shift. I certainly did longer than I should have. Others try to “innovate” their way through corporate structure the same way they did their product, and that often backfires.
My advice, carved from hundreds of founder conversations:
Innovate in the product.
Make your company structure as boring and vanilla as possible.
“Boring” processes scale.
”Boring” clarity creates leverage.
”Boring” governance lets you step away without the whole thing wobbling.
Perhaps most importantly- “Boring” clears diligence and lets you get the resources you need to grow your baby.
Growth doesn’t fail because of strategy. It fails because the founder’s role isn’t aligned with what the company actually needs next. And that’s a much harder shift to make than it sounds.
