To Process or Not to Process
Existential questions for scaling startups
I’ve worked at five VC-funded startups, from seed stage to Series I. I’ve seen a company grow from 700-4,000 employees in a year and a half, another die at the prototype phase, been on both sides of an acquisition, and worked on everything from a CPG market launch to compute cost forecasting to US Senate hearing prep.
Across this experience, I’ve seen a number of patterns emerge. The most glaring is that, in a startup, no topic is more fraught than process.
The Challenge
Process can feel like a dirty word in a startup, because it’s synonymous with bureaucracy. It’s the polar opposite of move fast and break things, which is a mentality genuinely needed for early-stage success.
No one disrupts an industry by spending precious time obsessing over their documentation setup or building project templates. With just a handful of employees, everyone knows each other and it’s natural to collaborate informally. Knowledge hubs and team practices evolve organically.
Once the company starts to scale, this becomes a liability — and often quicker than expected.
The Business Cost
Not having standardized company norms leads to problems like:
Confusion over priorities
Siloed information, often shaped by relationships and backchannel chatter
Misinformation about whether/when/in what state a project will ship
Rework, mistakes, and delays
Wasted time reinventing the wheel
Missing input from newer functions or hires
All of these issues are solvable. #1-3, for instance, can be addressed with a simple dashboard, clear owners, and a regular cadence for updates. In my experience, though, this often comes with friction.
What’s Happening Under the Surface
Here’s what I’ve seen, and where that might be coming from:
“We’re scrappy, we don’t waste time on process”
Scrappiness becomes a core part of team identity
Team members resist iterating on early-stage habits
Not ready to let go of the magic of starting out
Being part of something early on is a special experience
Scaling is bittersweet because it closes that chapter
Resistance to change
The company’s pace of evolution may outstrip employee growth
Resisting change is a way of managing fear and anxiety
Information gatekeeping
Silos benefit team members who have access
Chaos camouflages problems that are uncomfortable to discuss
How to Solve It
Focus on real problems, explain them in a relatable way, and co-create the solution. Solve for what needs to happen now, then iterate as the business evolves.
For example:
The Problem: investors are losing confidence because we aren’t shipping predictably. This impacts fundraising and threatens access to current VC support
Why It’s Happening: timelines are unclear and status updates travel through informal backchannels
What Solving it Looks Like: regular, accurate information about what’s shipping, when, and what’s standing in the way
Asking your team to solve a problem — and being open to different ways of solving it — will always play better than “it’s time to implement process X.” Inviting ownership of the mechanics of scaling means your team will understand the why behind the changes.
A counterintuitive move here is to ask your most staunchly anti-process team members to lead the way. This all but ensures you’ll wind up with minimum viable process instead of wasting time on meetings that could have been an email or pointlessly detailed status updates.
The dashboard example above? That’s what I’ve seen work, but it might not be the right idea for you. An existing template or solution can be a great starting point to riff from, but your business needs and culture are unique.
The Long Game
Getting this right isn’t about following a scaling checklist, it’s an opportunity to build trust. Your company is its own product: co-creating the load-bearing structures that make it run reinforces ownership in a tangible way an abstract set of stock options cannot.
You can transform the early-stage magic into a new form of shared purpose and trust by centering collaborative problem solving. This keeps your business running smoothly and pre-empts the politics that thrive in chaos and communication vacuums.