Boulder Startup Week 2024

We need to scale. How do we scale this? I know, we need to SCALE SCALE SCALE! We just need to scale to dominate the market! 

As a founder, you probably hear that 2-3 times this week ...and its Monday. Maybe even was excited about it, thought about it, even dreamed about it. Of course there's a catch -- it's incredibly likely you really shouldn't.

Scaling a company is an incredibly complex, expensive, and risky move that's hard to take back. The headlines talk about both ends of this. The Silicon Valley darling that experienced explosive growth, everyone be like them! Not long after, the explosive retraction is front and center with closing facilities, laying off staff, "what happened?!" -- and of course, there's more to the story. This isn't your investor/VC pep talk either. Think more "the hard thing about hard things".

This discussion will be a combination of explanation (presenting the words and contexts I use), some history and personal experience, then finally an open, honest discussion about the parts and pieces of scaling intentionally, and smart.