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“Tell me about the other executives?” I asked “Jason,” the CEO of a life sciences startup.
“There aren’t any other executives. It’s just me. That’s why I wanted your help,” he said. “I’ve never scaled a business before.”
That was almost four years ago. At the time, Jason’s revenue had just passed the $1 million ARR mark.
There are many stages to the growth of a startup. Jason was realizing that he was ending the first phase of building a startup:
Phase One: It’s all about you. Scaling to $1 million ARR.
Now, you can argue that there’s a Phase Zero of just getting your startup off the ground and building your initial team. However, I’m going to include that in Phase One.
There are exceptions, but most startups, as they are getting off the ground, are extremely dependent on their founders, especially the CEO. The company’s vision, recruiting, sales, marketing, and engineering may all be dependent on you.
That was certainly the case with Jason.
Everything depended upon Jason. Even though he had a sizable team around him, all the key decisions were made by Jason. The marketing was driven by Jason. The sales were driven by Jason. The technology development was driven by Jason.
