Blippar's co-founder realized her skills were perfect for the startup-to-scale-up phase but that she became a bottleneck at scale. Her inability to delegate meant others were better suited to lead the scaled team. This self-awareness is crucial for founders to prevent stalling growth and empower their organization.

Figma's founder, Dylan Field, admits he was a poor manager initially. His solution was to hire experienced leaders he could learn from directly, like his first director of engineering. This flips the traditional hiring dynamic; instead of hiring subordinates, insecure founders should hire mentors who can teach them essential skills and push the company forward.

The ideal founder archetype starts with deep technical expertise and product sense. They then develop exceptional business and commercial acumen over time, a rarer and more powerful combination than a non-technical founder learning the product.

A founder's role is constantly changing—from individual contributor to manager to culture builder. Success requires being self-aware enough to recognize you're always in a new, unfamiliar role you're not yet good at. Sticking to the old job you mastered is a primary cause of failure to scale.

Founder-led selling is essential for the first 6-12 months but becomes a critical growth bottleneck if it continues. Founders who can't let go create a self-fulfilling prophecy where the business can't scale beyond them. They must be coached to transition from being the primary seller to an enabler of the sales team.

Successor CEOs cannot replicate the founder's all-encompassing "working memory" of the company and its products. Recognizing this is key. The role must shift from knowing everything to building a cohesive team and focusing on the few strategic decisions only the CEO can make.

Counter to the modern "founder-led" mantra, a 20-year-old Matt Mullenweg hired an experienced CEO to run Automattic. This "Google era" model prioritized veteran leadership to scale the company, allowing the young founder to focus on product before eventually taking back the reins.

The founder hired an experienced CEO and then rotated through leadership roles in different departments (brand, product, tech). This created a self-designed, high-stakes apprenticeship, allowing him to learn every facet of the business from experts before confidently retaking the CEO role.

The young founder hired an experienced executive who became a mentor and effectively his boss. He learned more from observing this leader's actions—how he interacted with people and approached problems—than from direct instruction. This demonstrates the power of learning through osmosis from seasoned operators.