You're Managing Your Startup Team Wrong

One is the loneliest number

Most founders believe they can do it all. Early on, they're right. That belief gets a company off the ground.

It's also what caps it.

Here's the trap. When you're the best at everything, you hire people who are good enough. Functional. People who execute what you tell them. It feels efficient. You stay in control, and nobody pushes back.

Then growth flattens and you can't figure out why.

The answer is in your org chart. You built a team that needs you for everything.

Hire for judgment, not for hands

At 12 people, I changed how I hired. I stopped hiring people to do what I said. I started hiring people who knew more than I did about their piece of the business.

That was uncomfortable. They disagreed with me. Some of them were right more often than I was.

That was the point.

A team of functional people makes you the bottleneck. A team of strong people makes you the multiplier. You don't scale by doing more. You scale by deciding less.

The 30-Day Test

Here's what I ask every founder I advise. If you disappeared for 30 days, no phone, no email, what breaks?

If the answer is everything, you don't have a company. You have a job with employees.

List every decision only you make today. Circle the ones that truly need you. Usually it's a handful: vision, capital, key hires, the biggest customers. Everything else you're holding onto out of habit or fear.

Give those away. Not the task. The decision. "Do this" and "you own this" are two different sentences.

Manage outcomes, not activity

Founders who manage tasks end up managing everything. Founders who manage outcomes manage a handful of people who each run their own world.

When Henson Group was operating across six continents, I couldn't be in every time zone. I didn't try. Each leader owned a number and had the authority to hit it. My job was to set the target, clear what was in their way, and hold them to it.

That's the whole job at scale. Set direction. Hire people better than you. Get out of the way. Hold the line on results.

The hardest step I ever took

In 2021, I stepped out of the CEO seat at the company I founded. David Fuess became CEO, and I moved to Chairman.

People asked if that was hard. It was. I had run that company for almost 20 years.

It was also the right call. The company needed a leader built for the next stage, not the founder who got it to this one. Four years later, we merged with MyCloudDoor to form ALIANDO, a $120M ARR company. That doesn't happen if I'm still approving every decision.

Your job changes. Change with it.

At 1 person, your job is to do everything.

At 10, your job is to hire people who can do it without you.

At 50, your job is to build leaders who hire those people.

Most founders get stuck doing the job they were great at instead of the job the company needs now.

You are the most important person in your company. Make sure you're not the only one who matters.