Psychology says founders who scale past 10M in revenue almost always do this one uncomfortable thing early - Silicon Canals

"The hardest thing I ever did wasn't raising capital or landing our first enterprise client. It was admitting I needed to fire myself from most of my job. She wasn't being dramatic. She was describing the uncomfortable truth that psychology research now confirms: founders who scale past €10 million almost always have to kill their inner hero."

"The uncomfortable truth? Many founders become the bottleneck. Not because they lack capability, but because they have not made the internal shift from tactical operator to strategic leader. The same hands-on approach that saved your company in year one starts suffocating it in year three."

Successful founders face a critical inflection point between €5-10 million in revenue where the skills that built their company become liabilities. The hands-on, hero-complex approach necessary for early-stage survival—handling customer support, product development, and sales simultaneously—eventually suffocates growth by making founders the bottleneck. Psychology research confirms that founders scaling past €10 million must fundamentally shift from tactical operators to strategic leaders. This requires uncomfortable self-awareness and willingness to delegate core responsibilities, even though the founder's direct involvement initially created competitive advantage. The transition from doing everything to leading others represents the most difficult psychological hurdle many founders face.

Read at Silicon Canals