Going from founder-led startup to hiring staff and raising capital is in itself a risky venture. Wrong people on board, expensive habits, and losing agility are major hurdles on the road to success.

A favro study “The Pains of Growing Up”, together with Chalmers university, on this subject was published in November 2017 and I was also interviewed recently in Tech.co on this topic.

Maintaining the culture of the startup is initially the most important issue. As the company grows and more and more people are getting on board the founders will have less time to oversee who and how new employees, all with different experiences and knowledge, are joining the company. Making sure that executives are aligned with the company culture is, in my view, extremely important. Maintaining culture is a simple and efficient way to stay aligned with the goals of the company.

Recruiting is one thing — bad onboarding another. When new employees are signing up — how are they taken care of and presented to company culture and goals of the company? Emphasis and energy must be put into making sure that executives don’t only recruit from previous companies they have worked at — importing company culture from other companies to your startup.

Closely related to company culture is maintaining agility. Staying innovative is simple when you are a small company but agility is easily lost when you build a bigger company and is forced to set up a formal and coherent organization. To create a heavy-hitter you need to design your organization more as an organic and adaptable network of autonomous teams, than a rigid structure. Only then can you keep agility, creativity, and innovation as you scale.

Favro is a collaboration tool in the cloud that helps any growing company to stay agile — whatever size or type business you are in. If you want to make your work flow, organization wide — check out Favro yourself by signing up for a free trial.