Everything was working fine, until it wasn’t.
Ryan, founder of a fast-growing AI SaaS startup, had built something special. With just himself, two friends, and a few reliable contractors, they’d shipped fast, made smart bets, and even landed their first round of funding. But as customer growth surged, Ryan did what every founder needs to do at this point: he started hiring.
And that’s when everything started to break.
Slack blew up. Projects dragged. Deadlines slipped. Ryan found himself making every decision, solving every problem, and managing everyone’s emotions.
“I feel like I’m acting like a therapist half the time,” he told me.
“The other half, I’m trying to keep the lights on.”
This is what scaling without systems feels like. And it’s more common than you think.
When Growth Feels Like Chaos
Early-stage harmony is intoxicating. Small teams communicate easily. Everyone knows the product. Information spreads fast. Decisions happen in Slack threads or Zoom calls. There are no layers, just momentum. But once you grow beyond five or six people, the rules change.
In Ryan’s case, he brought on a product manager, a part-time designer, and two engineers in just a few months. And almost immediately, the velocity dropped. Miscommunications spiked. People started as