To keep growth aligned with product, foster a shared culture where everyone loves the product and customer. This isn't about formal meetings, but a baseline agreement that makes collaboration inherent. When this culture exists, the product team actively seeks marketing's input, creating a unified engine.

To maintain agility and deep expertise at scale, Andreessen Horowitz restructured into independent, specialized teams for sectors like bio, crypto, and AI. Each sub-team operates like the original firm, preventing large, unproductive group decisions and enabling focused expertise.

In a multi-product company, horizontal teams naturally prioritize mature, high-impact businesses. Structuring teams vertically with P&L ownership for each product, even nascent ones, ensures dedicated focus and accountability, preventing smaller initiatives from being starved of resources.

To avoid choosing between deep research and product development, ElevenLabs organizes teams into problem-focused "labs." Each lab, a mix of researchers, engineers, and operators, tackles a specific problem (e.g., voice or agents), sequencing deep research first before building a product layer on top. This structure allows for both foundational breakthroughs and market-facing execution.

To manage innovation and stability simultaneously, the company designates teams based on product maturity. 'Pre-PMF' teams have a six-month mandate to ship rapidly to find a market or be cut. 'Post-PMF' teams focus on long-term reliability and testing, creating distinct operational speeds within the organization.

To scale effectively, don't bottleneck knowledge with the CEO. Invest in specialized coaches, consultants, and mastermind groups for your department leaders. This empowers them to solve problems and develop their teams directly, as building the people is what ultimately builds the business.

ElevenLabs eliminates the traditional Product Manager role. They hire "product engineers" who own the entire development loop from ideation to shipping and analysis. Growth leads (often ex-PMs) then partner with engineering leads on GTM and acquisition, creating a faster, more accountable structure.

Contrary to typical advice, ElevenLabs targeted multiple customer segments simultaneously. This worked because they first built a best-in-class foundational AI model, attracting diverse users. They then hired founder-type leaders to own and grow each vertical-specific product, treating them as separate business units.

To avoid bureaucratic bloat, organize the company into small, self-sufficient "pods" of no more than 10 people. Each pod owns a specific problem and includes all necessary roles. Performance is judged solely on the pod's impact, mimicking an early-stage startup's focus.