Don't Leave Your People at the Starting Line

"We don't see you around here as often."
"Just wanted to check in and see what's been going on."
"Hate to bother you, but do you have a minute?"
"...where have you been?"

If you're a founder hearing these, you're not failing. You're growing. The thing you set out to build is working. It's just that now your days belong to the board, the investors, the growth strategy, the marketing, the engineers, the product, the warehouses, the stores. You haven't disappeared. The people who built this with you are just starting to get less of you.

You get it. They get it. But it still doesn't feel good. On either side.

Because when things take off, there's a moment. The one where you either bring the people who built this with you, or leave them at the starting line. No founder ever chooses the second one. But more times than not, that's exactly how the team experiences it.

The trajectory of your team isn't decided in that moment. It's decided by the work that starts well before you take off.

I've spent most of my career doing this work inside big global brands, where there's time to test, refine, and get it right. My work with startups is different. There's no runway. Zero to a hundred can happen overnight.

That's the plan, right?

So the decisions you make early about leadership, communication and culture matter even more. They don't stay small. They scale with you, intentionally or accidentally.

The problems that follow rarely come from capability. They come from assumptions. And assumptions turn into resentment.
Clarity turns into ownership.

Values are where everything starts. But values on a wall don't run a business. People do. So what I care about is whether your people know how the company works when you aren't in the room.

Could be three people. Could be ten. The number doesn't matter. What matters is they know their role, the plan, how decisions get made, what they ownership, and how to communicate when things get messy. Because if everything still has to come back through the founder, growth eventually finds the crack.

Ownership. Transparency. Trust. Communication. Not bolted on after the fact. Built before you need them.

And if global is the goal, and at Electrify Aotearoa it was the theme of every conversation, that foundation is about to get tested. It's one thing for a founder to walk into a meeting in New York, San Francisco or Singapore and figure it out. Founders are usually pretty good at that. It's another thing entirely when your team starts operating there too.

I know, because I've been that team. When I moved from New York City to New Zealand, I thought I knew how a meeting worked. Polished, printed notes, business cards at each seat, a high-rise boardroom. Here in New Zealand? Jeans and a t-shirt, grabbing a seat at your favourite local cafe or microbrewery. No titles. No formalities. I could feel the room shift the first few times I went to shake hands, give my card, prove to them who I was. She doesn't know how we do things here. They weren't wrong. I didn't. That default wasn't mine to impose. It was mine to learn.

Now flip it. Your team and their team on a Zoom call, no preparation beyond the business objective, and the differences start doing the talking:

"They don't get how we work."
"Why are they wearing a suit to a Zoom call?"
"They've listed their qualifications in every email."
"They're so casual. Do they even take this seriously?"

Teams quietly working around one another instead of with one another. Things slip. Nobody says why. Resentment builds on both sides of the ocean. Not because people aren't capable, but because nobody prepared them for the room they were walking into.

But get it right, and those same differences become the greatest asset you have. Different ways of working bring different ways of seeing. That's where the good stuff comes from. That's the version of global domination worth chasing: people from around the globe, speaking the same language.

You created this thing. Your baby. And you want to see it grow up. It'll change hands. Change leaders. Change countries. So let's make sure that wherever it goes, it remembers where it came from.

So, if growth showed up tomorrow, is your team ready? Not just to do the work. To carry what you've built into rooms you've never walked into yourself.

If you're unsure, that's not a failure. It just means it's time for a conversation.

Reach out and pick your favourite cafe- the coffee is on me.