Melina Cross

We wanted to "grow up" fast so we hired seasoned executives from large tech companies who brought impressive resumes and corporate playbooks.
But instead of accelerating our momentum, they introduced layers of bureaucracy, lengthy alignment meetings and hesitation around shipping fast and breaking things.
Our scrappy speed vanished replaced by a cautious corporate culture that couldn't survive in a fast-moving market.

For founders scaling their core team how do you balance the need for operational maturity with the agility required in the early days?