I had a call with someone who manages a sizable team at a large company.
They mentioned deploying to 5% of their users and seeing numbers in the millions. At that scale, it becomes a number. One naturally becomes accustomed to—and numb to—the scale of the impact.
I recalled a few memories from my experience managing a team at a pre-PMF startup and realized how different it was. When you’re that early, it’s life and death. You pay attention to every 10 new users. You likely even reach out and speak to them.
At a startup, you lead the team to move fast not just because “it’s the right thing,” but because you’re leading the team into discovery, not growth. You should be making mistakes because otherwise you’re not learning. There are no bureaucratic guardrails because there’s nothing to protect.
At scale, you can’t make mistakes. You should be moving slower. You should have guardrails. The structure is necessary for a reason.
In both cases, you lead the team. You still need to inspire, direct, prioritize, mentor, and enable. It reminded me of how leadership at a startup and a corporation is similar yet different. The primitives and building blocks are the same. They’re just applied differently.
It made me think of cooking. The ingredients are the same, the recipes are varied, and the chefs are different.