At around 50 employees, you get to the point where you can't see what's going on all the time. So you start to have weekly check-ins, and you have days that go by without knowing exactly what's going on.
The world's better off the more Silicon Valleys there are and the more scaled companies there are.
The number of people who have successfully scaled a company from dream to post-IPO success - you could list them on the fingers of two hands.
I never dreamed I could build a $100 million company. I just happened to build a $1 million company that became a $5 million company, and so on.
Over the last 20 years, I've worked on or invested in many companies that scaled to 100 million users or more. But here's the thing: You don't start with 100 million users. You start with a few. So, stop thinking big, and start thinking small.
At Andreessen Horowitz, we talk about the notion of being 'too hungry to eat.' That's to say, we often see startups that are so entrenched in the product that the founders forget they need muscle to grow.
Venture capital is about .02% of the U.S. economy invested, and it accounts for 11% of total U.S. jobs and 21% of U.S. economic output. And the reason why is because these companies can get very big, very quickly.
As leaders, we've all seen the painful effects of team members not keeping pace with company growth - it's called up-leveling, and it's all too common when a company goes from zero to something to hopefully an IPO.
It's easy to grow 300% in your first year or two, when you're starting with nothing and people first hear about your service. What separates a potential colossus from other businesses is the capacity to keep growing at that rate in years four, five, and beyond.
For decades, I've spoken of McDonald's as one of the premier examples of how to build a company, scale it, and ultimately sell it.
The Lean Startup has evolved into a movement that is having a significant impact on how companies are built, funded and scaled.
As the number of people who work at Basecamp has grown, I've noticed places where we could use more features, like management, structure, and guidelines. I've also noticed places where we've overengineered ourselves and should pull back.
A lot of scaling up a company is not very sexy or strategic.
With the premise that we look for technical co-founders to run a company, I view myself as being a coach to that technical co-founder. I can help them with their business issues, with the growth issues of taking a company from a very early stage to something much larger.
