Insight certainty 5/5 debate potential 3/5

Sturdy: Outlier founder skills alone cannot sustain a company at scale

Laela Sturdy · Laela Sturdy: Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund | E1190 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Aug 16, 2024 · at 23:36

Laela Sturdy is Managing Partner at CapitalG. She discusses why scaling a startup into a large enterprise requires transitioning from individual founder spikiness to a complete executive team.

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“It absolutely is a team sport. You can no longer just rely on one, that, that one outlier or that extreme outlier advantages or skills or gifts that, that founder has. Sure. Those continue to contribute in an outsized way to the company's success. But it will never be enough alone to compete on a field where you're playing against other teams.”

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