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As the founder of a high-growth SaaS business, Evan was the quintessential entrepreneur. Ideas and innovation were his strength, and they led to his success in attracting investors and inspiring his early hires. With the infusion of investment capital, the company entered a new stage of growth. To scale successfully, the business needed to standardize operations and develop repeatable processes to reliably deliver services to its customers. But these were not Evans strengths. With a near-constant flow of ideas and a desire to resource them, he soon earned a new nickname among his team: chief distraction officer. Eventually, investors grew tired of Evans lack of focus and replaced him with a seasoned operator who had the operational capabilities necessary to grow. The skills that make founders successful often become liabilities as a business builds. As executive coach Marshall Goldsmith says, What got you here wont get you there. Here are five leadership behaviors that break at scaleand where the fixes lie. 1. Creativity over Discipline Evan was a perfect example of someone whose creativity and passion were a perfect fit for a founder. As his business progressed to the next stage of growth, the primary skill required was the ability to build out processes, to systematize the product so that it would be delivered to clients consistently every time. But highly entrepreneurial leaders often find it draining to limit their focus to only the one or two proven products. Whats the solution for the mismatch of a founders talents to this later stage of growth? The most successful ones recognize new skills are needed, have the humility to accept their own limitations, find a great COO, and get out of that persons way. 2. High Appetite for Risk When starting out, its important to take risks, try new things, learn from your mistakes, and try again. As companies scale, though, the focus should turn to building stability and predictability. Sudden shifts in strategy and focus cause uncertainty and inconsistency, which erode the trust and confidence of customers, employees, and investors. How do leaders balance the need for continuous innovation with stability and predictability? Former Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg offer a great framework for continuing to innovate as you scale: the 70/20/10 rule. The idea calls for allocating 70% of capital to the core business, 20% to emerging products and services, and 10% to the cutting-edge, higher-risk ideas. This framework ensures that innovation is always happeningbut not at the expense of the core business. 3. Command-and-Control Leadership Founders are notorious for having their hands in every decision, from product development and pricing to the paint color of the office. As the company scales, this level of involvement is no longer possible. Founders have to bring on new leaders to mobilize, motivate, and manage a larger number of employees. But bringing in leaders is the easy part: Moving to distributed leadership, where the company is truly led by a team instead of an individual, is harder. Distributed leadership calls for founder CEOs to step out of the day-to-day operational decisions, delegate, trust, and empower those on their team to drive results. Allowing others to share the management responsibilities pays enormous dividends. Beside the obvioushaving others to lean on for their knowledge and expertiseit also helps to ensure the stability and continuity of the business. Only by distributing leadership will CEOs be able to elevate their role to focus more on leading strategy. 4. Open-Door Communication Early-stage leaders enjoy the close proximity of their team and the ability to communicate in real time. It can be really challenging for CEOs to break the habit of communicating informally and directly with everyone at the company. To scale successfully, a CEO needs to shift to more measured and intentional communication. As Google was growing rapidly in the early 2000s, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin faced the challenge of shifting from being player-coaches who shared an office with fellow software engineers to becoming key executives of a publicly traded company. To help themand their employeesenforce new and necessary boundaries, the two hired a key executive assistant. That new hire served as a filter for their email and a bouncer for their office, with their role empowered to moderate the flow of people in and out so the executives could be more disciplined with their time and focus. 5. Valuing Relationships over Accountability A key ingredient to building a successful company is a high-performing teamand most startups dont begin with one. Founder CEOs often describe their initial team as a family who have bonded with each other through the intense challenges of the startup experience. Sometimes, early employees are actual familysiblings, spouses, and children are often part of the act, bringing all of their relationship dynamics with them. High-performing teams, by contrast, run on accountability. Those who are not able to deliver the required results wont make it, regardless of their relationship to the founder. Adding accountability structures like job descriptions, goal-setting, and performance management helps to ensure the team is on track to execute. These processes also help to shine a light on anyone who is unable to adapt to the new demands of the larger and more complex organization. Inevitably, founders will be forced to make some difficult decisions regarding some of the early team members to make way for new talent who can drive results and take the business to the next level. Building a sustainable, stable growth engine with double-digit year-over-year growth is hard. Each new stage of growth brings new challenges that require a different set of skills. The most successful leaders are those who understand the need to adapt their behaviors to meet the next stageand what it demands.
Category:
E-Commerce
Have you heard of Maycember? According to social media, it’s a term that describes the hectic nature and mounting expenses families face around May, particularly parents with children, due to the increased cost of everything from graduation gifts to summer camps and family vacations, which combined with inflation (and tariffs), have made May feel extra expensive, just like the winter holiday season. That’s as total spending for college and graduation gifts is expected to reach a record $6.8 billion in 2025, up from $6.1 billion in 2024, according to the National Retail Federation. And U.S. consumer spending was up in May 2024, even as prices remained stable; the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index was unchanged last May but still marked a 2.6% year-over-year rise, according to financial news site Finimize. (On the consumer side, spending increased by 0.2%, maintaining momentum from Aprils 0.1% rise, aided by a 0.5% bump in personal income.) May often feels like a second December because so many expenses pile up at once, Isabel Barrow, executive director of financial planning at Edelman Financial Engines, told CNBC. Some of those expenses include graduation, Mother’s Day, camp, summer travel, and weddings. Some families might also have higher grocery bills when children come home from college to visit for July 4, or throughout summer until Labor Day weekend. And the end of spring brings a flurry of activities that mark the end of the school year and the beginning of summer, which can often require paying up for tickets, gear, or other related expenses, including school events like dance or music recitals, kids’ sports tournaments, field trips, and end-of-year projects. But just where exactly did the term “Maycember” come from, anyway? The word got out after the Holderness family, popular on social media, posted a funny YouTube video that went viral, garnering 270,000-plus views. The family has since posted another Maycember parody. Meanwhile, a number of parents have also taken to social media to post and commiserate about Maycember; a recent Instagram post from Scary Mommy got more than 23,000 likes and even more shares.
Category:
E-Commerce
Twice a year, New Yorkers and visitors are treated to a phenomenon known as Manhattanhenge, when the setting sun aligns with the Manhattan street grid and sinks below the horizon framed in a canyon of skyscrapers. The event is a favorite of photographers and often brings people out onto sidewalks on spring and summer evenings to watch this unique sunset. The first Manhattanhenge of the year takes place Wednesday at 8:13 p.m., with a slight variation happening again Thursday at 8:12 p.m. It will occur again on July 11 and 12. Some background on the phenomenon: Where does the name Manhattanhenge come from? Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson coined the term in a 1997 article in the magazine Natural History. Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York’s American Museum of Natural History, said he was inspired by a visit to Stonehenge as a teenager. The future host of TV shows such as PBSs Nova ScienceNow was part of an expedition led by Gerald Hawkins, the scientist who first theorized that Stonehenge’s mysterious megaliths were an ancient astronomical observatory. It struck Tyson, a native New Yorker, that the setting sun framed by Manhattan’s high-rises could be compared to the sun’s rays striking the center of the Stonehenge circle on the solstice. Unlike the Neolithic Stonehenge builders, the planners who laid out Manhattan did not mean to channel the sun. It just worked out that way. When is Manhattanhenge? Manhattanhenge does not take place on the summer solstice itself, which is June 20 this year. Instead, it happens about three weeks before and after the solstice. That’s when the sun aligns itself perfectly with the Manhattan grid’s east-west streets. Viewers get two different versions of the phenomenon to choose from. On May 28 and July 12, half the sun will be above the horizon and half below it at the moment of alignment with Manhattan’s streets, according to the Hayden Planetarium. On May 29 and July 11, the whole sun will appear to hover between buildings just before sinking into the New Jersey horizon across the Hudson River. Where can you see Manhattanhenge? The traditional viewing spots are along the city’s broad east-west thoroughfares: 14th Street, 23rd Street, 34th Street, 42nd Street, and 57th Street. The farther east you go, the more dramatic the vista as the sun’s rays hit building facades on either side. It is also possible to see Manhattanhenge across the East River in the Long Island City section of Queens. Is Manhattanhenge an organized event? Manhattanhenge viewing parties are not unknown, but it is mostly a DIY affair. People gather on east-west streets a half-hour or so before sunset and snap photo after photo as dusk approaches. That’s if the weather is fine. There’s no visible Manhattanhenge on rainy or cloudy days, and both are unfortunately in the forecast this week. Do other cities have henges? Similar effects occur in other cities with uniform street grids. Chicagohenge and Baltimorehenge happen when the setting sun lines up with the grid systems in those cities in March and September, around the spring and fall equinoxes. Torontohenge occurs in February and October. But Manhattanhenge is particularly striking because of the height of the buildings and the unobstructed path to the Hudson.
Category:
E-Commerce
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