Founders Are Hiring Fewer Managers, and It Is Showing

Flat teams scaled well to fifty people. Past two hundred, the cracks are structural.

Nobody in founders expected the shift to arrive this quickly, which is part of why the reaction has been so uneven.

Talent is the quiet constraint. The teams able to execute on this are small, well known to each other, and increasingly able to name their price.

What separates this from previous cycles is the composition of the capital. Crossover funds that retreated in 2023 are back, but they write structured checks with preferences and ratchets that never appear in a headline valuation.

The people closest to it describe the mood as cautious optimism: real demand, real revenue, and a healthy fear of repeating the last cycle.

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