{"id":1190,"date":"2017-06-25T17:38:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-25T16:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/2017\/06\/25\/to-grow-faster-hit-pause\/"},"modified":"2017-06-25T17:38:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-25T16:38:00","slug":"to-grow-faster-hit-pause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silta.es\/juantatay\/to-grow-faster-hit-pause\/","title":{"rendered":"To Grow Faster, Hit Pause"},"content":{"rendered":"

To Grow Faster, Hit Pause \u2014 and Ask These Questions from Stripe\u2019s COO | First Round Review<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of companies don\u2019t decide how<\/em> they want to grow until they\u2019re well into their growth phase,\u201d she says. \u201cFor a long time, your actions pull your company along, and then all of a sudden it switches \u2014 your existing business starts pushing your behavior<\/span>. External forces like feature requests, the need for more customer support, the need to create a team to do X when you never even needed to do X before \u2014 those forces start to dictate your decisions.\u201d<\/div>\n
The key, she says, is pausing just long enough to be very intentional about how you approach each phase of growth. <\/span><\/div>\n

It\u2019s easy to become too reactive, and when that happens, you\u2019ll inevitably start to make human resources mistakes, execution mistakes, prioritization mistakes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1. Have we documented our operating principles?<\/span><\/h1>\n
Stripe calls them \u201cOperating Principles<\/span>.\u201d (Many companies have \u201cvalues,\u201d but Stripe wanted to distinguish philosophical beliefs from the concrete principles that should be applied to the day-to-day work of running the business.) Three of Stripe\u2019s operating principles, as Johnson describes them, are:<\/div>\n