SCALING a Startup

This guide is a part of a larger 3-part guide called The Startup Series. Each of the 3 guides will help you go from idea to full-scale execution.

You can jump to any part of The Startup Series here:

STARTING a Startup

ESTABLISHING a Startup

Becoming the Greatest Chief of Staff Ever

Table of Contents:

• Table of Contents:
• First Off, Who Am I? Why Trust Me and What I Am About to Say?
• SCALING a Startup Guide ⤵️
• AS THE FOUNDER….
• Your Existing Framework (From Notion)
• Expanded Content & Resources
• Growth Strategies
• Operations
• Funding
• Leadership
• Metrics
• Additional Tips
• Database Enhancement (From Notion)
• SCALING a Startup Guide ⤵️

First Off, Who Am I? Why Trust Me and What I Am About to Say?

All you should know about me is that I was once lost and I am now saved because of the Death, Burial, Resurrection, Ascension, and Grace on display, of the Lord Jesus Christ dying for my sins, in order for me to be made right with God the Father.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.“ (John 14:6)

This is not a “contending for the faith”, rather this is a tool to help sharpen one’s faith and understand his/her depravity in order to understand his/her reliance and dependency upon the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Which you can say, innately, becomes the Truth. Whether people accept or deny the Truth, it is still the Truth. No amount of man-used words matters when the Day of Judgement abounds.

Are you in right standing with God?

SCALING a Startup Guide ⤵️

COMING SOON!

AS THE FOUNDER….

If you are the founder of this thing, don’t just take it from my experience in witnessing the best CEO’s in the world operate, take it from Sam Altman.

Here are 13 of his thoughts.

"I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter. Everything here is easier to do once you’ve already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success. But much of it applies to anyone."

1. Compound Yourself
• It's useful to focus on adding another zero to whatever you define as your success metric - money, status, impact on the world, or whatever
• "But I always want it to be a project that, if successful, will make the rest of my career look like a footnote."
• Be willing to let small opportunities go to focus on potential step changes
• One of the notable aspects of compound growth is that the furthest out years are the most important
• Trust the exponential, be patient, and be pleasantly surprised
2. Have almost too much self-belief
• Cultivate this early
• Self-belief must be balanced with self-awareness
• Truth-seeking is hard and often painful, but it is what separates self-belief from self-delusion
3. Learn to think independently
• Entrepreneurship is difficult to teach because original thinking is difficult to teach
• School isn't set up to teach this
• You have to cultivate it yourself
• "I will fail many times, and I will be really right once."
• Practice finding solutions even when there seem like there is none
4. Get good at "sales"
• Self-belief needs convincing others to believe
• Every job becomes a sales job at some point
• Requires inspiring vision
• Strong communication skills
• Degree of charisma
• Evidence of execution ability
• Get better at written communication
• Show up in person whenever it's important
5. Make it easy to take risks
• Most people overestimate risk and underestimate reward
• It’s often easier to take risks earlier in your career…….
• "It easy - and human nature - to prioritize short-term gain and convenience over long-term fulfillment
• Keeping your life cheap and flexible for as long as you can is a powerful way to do this, but obviously comes with trade-offs
6. Focus
• Focus is a force multiplier on work
• It's much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours
• I have yet to meet a slow-moving person who is very successful
7. Work hard
• You can get to the 90th% by working either smart or hard, BUT the 99% requires both
• Extreme people get extreme results (comes with trade-offs)
• Momentum compounds
• Success begets success
• You have to figure out how to work hard without burning out
• In fact, work stamina seems to be one of the biggest predictors of long-term success
• "One more thought about working hard: do it at the beginning of your career. Hard work compounds like interest, and the earlier you do it, the more time you have for the benefits to pay off."
8. Be bold
• I believe it's easier to do a hard startup than an easy startup
• Follow your curiosity. Things that seems exciting to you will often seem exciting to other people too
9. Be willful
• A big secret: you can usually bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time
• Reasons people fail: combo of self-doubt, giving up too early, and not pushing hard enough
• Ask for what you want
• Successful people = “I am going to keep going until this works, and no matter what the challenges are I’m going to figure them out”
• Be optimistic. I have never met a very successful pessimistic person
10. Be hard to compete with
• Companies are more valuable if they are harder to compete with
• Same with people
• If you are doing the same thing everyone else is doing….. you are not going to be hard to compete with
• Strategy examples for building leverage: personal relationships, building a strong personal brand, or getting good at the intersection of multiple different fields
11. Build a network
• Great work requires teams
• The size of the network of really talented people you know often becomes the limiter for what you can accomplish
• Take care of the people who work for you
• Be overly generous with sharing the upside; it will come back to you 10x
• Also, learn how to evaluate what people are great at, and put them in those roles.
• "You want to have a reputation for pushing people hard enough that they accomplish more than they thought they could, but not so hard they burn out"
• Define yourself by your strengths, NOT YOUR WEAKNESSES
• "Acknowledge your weaknesses and figure out how to work around them, but don’t let them stop you from doing what you want to do"
• "Remember that you are mostly looking for rate of improvement, and don’t overvalue experience or current accomplishment"
• Finally, remember to spend your time with positive people who support your ambitions.

• Additional note I liked: "A special case of developing a network is finding someone eminent to take a bet on you, ideally early in your career. The best way to do this, no surprise, is to go out of your way to be helpful. (And remember that you have to pay this forward at some point later!)"

• "Eventually, you will define your success by performing excellent work in areas that are important to you. The sooner you can start off in that direction, the further you will be able to go. It is hard to be wildly successful at anything you aren’t obsessed with."

1/ Lack of Organization

You must set up the following:

• Communication channels
• Weekly meetings
• Quarterly 1 on 1s
• Bonus policies
• Raise policies
• Repercussions for mistakes
• Levels of leaders
• etc

2/ Improper Delegation

Setup a leadership team that supports you as the founder so that the business is not 100% dependent upon you.

Furthermore, those leaders should have assistant leaders under them that manage the newest team members.

3/ Missing Financial Data

You need to have your financials in order from the very get go.

A CPA/bookkeeper is one of the first hires you should make.

4/ Absence of documentation

Document your processes and systems that make the entire business function in every aspect.

The team should function 100% on their own with the processes and systems created.

5/ Internal destruction

One of the main reasons companies can't scale successfully is due to the CEO dealing with internal struggles.

More often than not it's because they are consumed by their business.

Purpose: Grow sustainably—expand team, optimize operations, increase revenue.

Your Existing Framework (From Notion)

• Growth Strategies: New markets, partnerships.
• Operations: Systems, automation.
• Funding: VC, angels, scaling capital.
• Leadership: Scaling yourself, delegation.
• Metrics: What to track, how to adjust.

Expanded Content & Resources

Growth Strategies

• Expansion:
• Enter new markets—use CB Insights (cbinsights.com) for trend research.
• Partnerships: Look at Stripe Atlas (stripe.com/atlas) for global reach.
• Book: Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman—scale fast, even if messy.

Operations

• Systems:
• Automate with Zapier (zapier.com) or Airtable (airtable.com).
• SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures): Template at Process.st.
• Resource: The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber—work on the business.

Funding

• VC/Angels:
• Pitch via PitchBook (pitchbook.com) or Crunchbase (crunchbase.com).
• Prep with Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start.
• X Insight: @sama (Sam Altman) often shares VC tips.

Leadership

• Scaling Yourself:
• Delegate effectively—read High Output Management by Andrew Grove.
• Hire a COO or VA (virtual assistant) to offload tasks.
• Mindset: @elonmusk on X: “Focus on signal over noise.”

Metrics

• What to Track:
• Revenue, churn rate, NPS (Net Promoter Score—use SurveyMonkey.com).
• Tool: Mixpanel (mixpanel.com) for analytics.
• Book: Measure What Matters by John Doerr—OKRs for focus.

Additional Tips

• Network: Attend TechCrunch Disrupt (techcrunch.com/events) or similar.
• Sustainability: Read Good to Great by Jim Collins—build for longevity.

Database Enhancement (From Notion)

Your database already tracks books, tools, and courses. Here’s more to add:

• Books:
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel—innovation over competition.
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz—raw startup truths.
• Tools:
• Loom (loom.com)—video messaging for teams.
• Calendly (calendly.com)—scheduling made easy.
• Courses:
• Coursera.org: “How to Start Your Own Business” (UPenn).
• Udemy.com: “Startup Entrepreneurship Masterclass”.

SCALING a Startup Guide ⤵️

© Anthony Dap III | Dream BIG & Co. LLC 2020-2030