Entrepreneur Personal Growth Path

One aspect of entrepreneurship that isn’t talked about very often is the personal growth path. What I mean by this is the necessary progression management progression during the lifecycle of a startup that scales from nothing to tens, hundreds, or even thousands of employees.

Here are some sample inflection points:

• 0 – 10 employees – doer and manager
• 11 – 20 employees – mostly manager and some manager of managers
• 21 – 50 employees – mostly manager of managers and some manager of manager of managers
• 50+ employees – manager of manager of managers (e.g. manager of an executive team)

There’s a book just about this subject — Leading at the Speed of Growth. My advice is for entrepreneurs to be cognizant of this path and to prepare and understand it as best they can.