Entrepreneurs perhaps expect to lose sleep (and all sense of control over their inbox) when scaling their venture from a startup into a unicorn. However, one millennial founder was warned he’d have to also lose his entire leadership team in the process.
When Alex Bouaziz launched the HR platform Deel in 2019, he was just 25 years old. Although he had already put his weight behind a couple of “nice but very small scale” startups, he insists that this was a “completely different beast”.
So naturally, the now 31-year-old French-born businessman was all ears when seasoned entrepreneurs wanted to offer their advice on scaling.
“When I started Deel, someone told me the different stages of the business require different types of people and you will basically need to replace your whole leadership team, when you get to $1 million in ARR (annual recurring revenue), and then $5 million,” he recalls to Fortune.
After all, bootstrapping a startup, raising capital, and managing a handful of employees require different management skills than running a billion-dollar business with thousands of stakeholders.
