5 Essential Steps to Scale

"Scaling is not about doing more. It’s about doing less of what doesn't matter so you can do more of what does." - Reed Hastings

Having scaled teams and organizations at Big Tech and advising startups looking to scale, I couldn’t agree more with this quote from Reed Hastings.

In the rush to take the business from 0 to $$$M business, most leaders optimize for speed of execution.

They want features out the door yesterday. But there is a hidden cost to moving fast without a strategy.

I have firsthand seen founders taking shortcuts by ignoring the various debts (think infra, tech debt & more). They eventually will turn into roadblocks when you get to the next series.

Here is my blueprint for leaders

founders looking to scale without losing momentum.

1️⃣ Move from feature first to platform first: 

If you are building one off solutions for every new customer, you cannot scale. Start by building a platform that solves for the next 100 customers, not just the next one.

2️⃣ Make decisions fast:  

Velocity is key. Look around the organization and see where the bottlenecks are. Remove decision process fatigue by having one person responsible not 2 or 3 people.

3️⃣ Hire system thinkers

Hire people who think for the long term such that your product can scale and not break for every new integration.  Stop hiring just for technical skills. Start hiring for "systems thinkers."

4️⃣ Prioritize ruthlessly

Your roadmap will keep growing and at some point it will become a huge task list. Every year, you should be removing features, deprecating old processes, and simplifying your stack. If you simply keep adding to it, the system including personnel will eventually collapse.

5️⃣ Put strong guardrails

Don't wait for a release to fail or an escalation to learn from. Set up guardrails that alert you when the system is showing signs of wear and tear. Prevent crises before they happen.

👉 Scaling is not simply adding but subtracting things that don't contribute to success.

➕ Follow Yatissh Siddaramaiah for more on organizational and leadership strategies.