From start-up to scale-up: Hire right, grow fast
As your start-up gains traction, one of the biggest challenges founders face is when, who, and how to hire for scalable growth. Hiring too soon can burn your runway. Hiring too late can stall momentum. Here's how to get strategic about building your team—and your hiring pipeline.
The challenges of hiring at the growth stage
Step 1: Delegate. Step 2: Figure out to whom.
Hiring during the transition from founder-led to scalable operations comes with big decisions:
Lack of clarity: Founders aren’t always sure what role is needed next.
Revenue mismatch: You're not sure how much new revenue is needed to safely support the hire.
Overhiring risk: Hiring senior roles too early before the GTM model is proven.
Underhiring risk: Waiting too long and overloading the core team.
Founder bandwidth: You’re still wearing 10 hats and don’t have time to run a hiring process well.
Cultural shift: Each hire impacts company culture and requires change management.
Step 1: Build a strategic hiring pipeline
Think of your hiring pipeline like a product roadmap—tied directly to growth stage and revenue milestones.
What does your revenue need to look like?
Use a general benchmark:
Each new hire should be covered by 6–9 months of predictable revenue, OR be directly responsible for creating net-new revenue (e.g. sales or demand gen).
If you're raising a round, plan to invest 20–30% of new funds into key hires.
Who should you hire first?
Phase 1 – Foundational roles (Pre-scale, $20k–50k MRR)
These roles help remove you (the founder) as the bottleneck:
Demand Gen or Content Marketer (Freelance/Part-Time) - Starts compounding content, feeds early pipeline
Sales/BDR (junior or outsourced) - Starts systematising top-of-funnel outreach
Customer Success / Onboarding - Keeps churn low, ensures early product value
Ops Support - Frees you up for strategic focus
Tactic:
Use fractional experts where possible: e.g., marketing agency, part-time SDR, RevOps consultant.
Phase 2 – GTM core team (Early scale, $50k–100k MRR)
These roles help build your internal GTM engine:
Head of Growth or RevOps (FT or Fractional) - Aligns funnel, tracks ROI, connects marketing + sales
Account Executive / Sales Lead - Turns qualified interest into deals
Product Marketing Lead - Owns messaging, case studies, lead gen, and GTM launches
Customer Support or CSM - Drives retention and expansion revenue
Prioritise roles that either:
Generate revenue
Retain revenue
Free up your time to focus on product/fundraising
Phase 3 – Strategic C-level hires (Post-product market fit / Scale-Up, >$100k+ MRR or Series A)
These roles build scale and structure:
CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) - Owns the full customer acquisition and revenue engine
CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) - Strategic brand/growth vision, demand strategy
CFO (Chief Financial Officer) - Manages burn, cash runway, forecasting, and board reporting, prevents runway surprises
COO (Chief Operating Officer) - Turns vision into processes, owns internal operations
Step 2: Lead through the transition
Hiring and scaling your team shifts company culture, decision-making, and pace. Founders often struggle with:
#1 Letting go of control and delegating
In the early stages, founders are the business. As the company grows, founders must become the enablers of others’ success.
Letting go can be tough for founders.
There’s the emotional tie to what they’ve built, a fear of losing control, and the feeling that only they truly “get” the business.
#2 Changing internal communication rhythms
As a team grows, the old way of communicating—quick Slack pings, impromptu desk chats, or founder “brain dumps” in meetings—no longer scales. What once felt fast and organic starts feeling chaotic or unclear.
Founders often struggle here because:
They’re used to being “in the loop” on everything.
They underestimate how much more clarity the team needs as it grows.
But without evolving internal comms, teams get out of sync, priorities can feel fuzzy, and decisions can get bottlenecked at the founder.
So, what to do instead:
Overcommunicate the vision
Monthly all-hands (vision, progress, priorities), “Why We’re Doing This” reflections to reinforce vision
Quarterly OKR reviews or retrospective
#3 Bringing in senior people who challenge thinking
Founders are used to being the visionary and the executor. It can feel threatening when new senior hires bring frameworks, pushback, or alternative strategies.
There's fear that giving too much away may dilute the original vision.
What to do Instead
Look for people who think differently but share your values. They can help you see what you can’t.
Encourage constructive challenge: “If you disagree with me, I want to hear it.”
Set expectations: “You own X. Here’s the strategic context, and here’s where I stay involved.”
#4 Culture: Preserving core values, evolving expectations
The orginal team joined a startup—where things moved fast, roles were fluid, and everyone wore five hats. As you add structure, you risk losing the magic. But structure isn’t the enemy—unclear roles and inconsistent communication are.
How to manage it:
Co-create a “Culture v2.0” session: Invite input on what to preserve and evolve
Create a “How We Work” doc: clarify norms, decision-making, async vs sync
Run 1:1s and pulse check surveys every 4–6 weeks
Celebrate people who adapt—not just those who produce
#5 Process & systems: From chaos to clarity
Scaling introduces operational debt—processes break, handoffs get messy, and everyone feels a bit lost.
How to manage it:
Build a central wiki or Notion workspace
Create a RACI matrix between the teams. Clarify who owns what:
Without clear ownership:
Deadlines slip because everyone thinks someone else is driving it.
Teams waste time asking, “Who approves this?”
A RACI fixes this by turning “we’ll figure it out” into clear, documented roles—especially important in cross-functional initiatives like launching a new product, planning a GTM campaign, or hiring a new team.
Hold quarterly retros: “What’s working? What’s breaking?”
Appoint someone to own ops/enablement even part-time
#6 Get external help to navigate change
Sometimes founders are too close to the problem. Change fatigue hits hard, and ego can make it hard to ask for help.
Recommended support options:
Fractional Head of Talent Acceleration or external agency, such as TalentBee, to help with the recruitment pipeline (especially if you’re hiring fast)
Leadership coach (to help founders with the load)
Advisory board or growth mentor (especially if you’re facing "firsts")
Change management consultant (for post-Series A org planning)
"Growth doesn't come from doing more. It comes from doing less, better."
Scaling your team isn’t about speed—it’s about hiring smart and knowing when to step aside. The best founders bring in experts not just to execute, but to challenge assumptions and sharpen their vision.
