More People Does Not Equal Better Results
Wang: It feels very logical that more people equals better results and more stuff being done. But rather paradoxically, if you have a very high-performing team and a very high-performing org, it's nearly impossible to grow it dramatically without losing all that high performance.
A very high-performing team of a certain size is almost like this very intricate sculpture — this interplay between all the people on the team. If you add a bunch of people into that, even if the people are great, it just screws the whole thing up.
A high-performing team is like an intricate sculpture. Add a bunch of people and it screws the whole thing up.
The Common Failure Mode
Wang: A common startup failure mode is you have something that works, but everybody in the company is really junior. Things are scaling but the wheels are falling off. Your investors tell you to hire some executives.
So you do exec searches, bring them in, give the exec a lot of rope. The exec says we need to hire a massive team to hit our results. And you say yeah, you seem experienced, let's do what you say. The reality is this almost always results in ruin.
Your investors tell you to hire executives. The exec says hire a massive team. This almost always results in ruin.
How to Actually Hire Execs
Wang: When you hire executives from the outside, they really need to get steeped in how the company works. Before they make any major sweeping suggestions, they need to get into the rhythm and operations. They need to understand why the things that are working are working.
Then they make thoughtful suggestions. They take small steps. You trust and verify each step. Eventually they can make more sweeping suggestions. You're not buying some magical bag of goods that is going to bring a magic formula into your business.
You're not buying some magical bag of goods that will bring a magic formula into your business.
The Founder Fantasy
Wang: There's a founder fantasy — I'm going to hire a bunch of incredible execs, they'll do all the stuff I don't want to do, and I'm going to sit back and watch the machine work. That's extremely unrealistic.
The reason you're a good founder CEO is because you make very good decisions over and over again over an extended period of time. To pull yourself out of those decision-making loops would be crazy.
Investors believe that founder-led companies are going to out-innovate the market. So your job is to out-innovate the market. You better be in the strategic decisions.
The reason you're a good founder CEO is because you make very good decisions over and over again. To pull yourself out of that would be crazy.