Following is a guest post from Chris Moody. Chris is president and COO of Gnip, one of the silent killers in our portfolio. Once the main stream tech press starts noticing Gnip, they will be blown away at how big they got in such a short period of time by just executing. Chris is a huge part of this – he joined Gnip when they were 10 people and has been instrumental in working with Jud Valeski, Gnip’s founder and CEO, to build a mind blowing team, business, and market leadership position.
Following is a great email Chris sent me Friday night in advance of the Foundry Group “Scaling Your Company Conference” which we are having this week for CEOs of companies we are investors in that are on the path from 50 to 500 people.
Startups that experience success are typically built upon a strong foundation of trust among the early founders/employees. This trust has been solidified through long days/nights in small offices working on hard problems together. The amazing thing is that the founders don’t always realize that their company is even operating under an umbrella of trust or that trust is one of their core values. Instead, they just know that it feels easy to make decisions and to get shit done.
When companies try to scale, one of the biggest mistakes they make is trying to replace trust with process. This is rarely a conscious decision, it just feels necessary to add new rules in order to grow. After all, there are a lot of new people coming into the company and it isn’t clear who of the new people can be trusted yet.
A startup obviously needs to add process in order to scale, but if you replace trust with process, you’ll rip the heart right out of your company. When adding processes, ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this new process help us go faster?
- Does this new process help us be more efficient?
If the answer to these questions is “yes” you are off to a great start.
Now ask yourself “Are we adding this process because we don’t trust people to make decisions?” If the answer to this question even has a hint of “maybe” you need to stop and really consider the cost of that process.
Replacing trust with process is like a cancer that will spread quickly and silently throughout the company. One day you’ll wake up and think “this place doesn’t feel special any more” or ask yourself “why is it so hard for us to get stuff done.”
Trust could be one of your most valuable company assets. As a leader, you need to fight like hell to protect it. If you are successful protecting trust, you’ll actually grow much faster and you’ll still have a place where people love working.
I’ve seen trust work at a 700 person company. Trust can scale.