Boufarhat: Founders fail beyond 40 employees by refusing to delegate control
Johnny Boufarhat · 20VC: Hopin, The Breakout Startup of 2020 on Scaling from 10 to 230 People and $174M in Funding in just 13 Months, The 3 Phases of Startup Scaling, How To Lead Remote Teams Effectively, The Future of Events Post-COVID and more · Dec 10, 2020 · at 12:38
Johnny Boufarhat, founder and CEO of Hopin, reflects on common leadership mistakes made by young founders when scaling companies beyond early headcount.
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“You get a lot of founders who do fantastically early on, and they don't know how to scale past, like, 40 people. They still want to be overlord. They still think their opinions matter more than everyone else.”
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“When we were nine people, our customers didn't care how slowly we hired. So I was like, we need to bring good people in very quickly, as good as possible. So really, the speed thing was more important. Quality needed to be there, but it was not of total import…”