u/omaiz_Kelvin

I have noticed a pattern talking to founders stuck in revenue amount which was not increasing. Their product is solid. Customers want what they have. Yet growth is a grind.

Most assume the problem is external competition, market saturation or bad timing.
Real answer? Operational debt.

Every startup takes shortcuts early on, clunky processes, unclear ownership, decisions that live in the founder's head. That's "organizational debt", and according to Steve Blank(American Entrepreneur and educator), it can kill a company even faster than technical debt. As Peter van Sabben(Global Marketing Manager) puts it, it's the hidden accumulation of unresolved choices that cumulatively undermines organizational effectiveness.

Founders keep obsessing over competitors when the real bottleneck is staring back at them in the mirror. Growth does not stall due to the market, competition, or lack of opportunity. It stalls because the founder has not evolved fast sufficient to match the business they have built and the cost is not just burnout, it is slower growth and reduced odds of success.

The hidden costs? Teams waiting for founder sign off, high potential people underutilized, decisions slowing as everything funnels to one person, and growth capped by the founder's personal bandwidth. Check your own calendar, if half your week is work that someone else could reasonably own, you are already the bottleneck.

Your biggest competitor is not another startup. It is your own lack of systems.
Curious, what is the one operational bottleneck you are dealing with right now?

Sharing the thing which I learned or noticed from last 2 weeks. I have spent a lot of time talking to the founders who have also experienced their business stuck in that frustrating gap between the real revenue and expected revenue. They are beyond survival mode but every attemt to grow just add chaos, complexity and burnout.
One pattern which I keep seeing is, almost everyone tries to grow by doing more works, hiring more than usual, doing meetings, adding more features (tools or services) and channels(Instagram ads and email marketing). But founders who actually break through the situation and go on next level do the opposite things, they remove before they add anything.
While having these all these conversations, I started receiving the recommendation of this one book which is the source that changed the thoughts about growth. It is free audiobook, put out by the team that has studied hundreds of companies, where they covered ,
- Why the most businesses revenue revenue revolves around one or two million dollars.
- How to build scalable business model instead of just doing a to do list about growth.
- Practical framework to scale without burning out the best people in your team.
I am not affilicate with them in any ways, but the insights were the game changer for few founder I know.
Happy to share this with you all,It’s a free audiobook, easy to find online.

And also I would like to hear your thoughts about, what has been your biggest obstacle when you try to grow your business?

Sharing the thing which I learned or noticed from last 2 weeks. I have spent a lot of time talking to the founders who have also experienced their business stuck in that frustrating gap between the real revenue and expected revenue. They are beyond survival mode but every attemt to grow just add chaos, complexity and burnout.
One pattern which I keep seeing is, almost everyone tries to grow by doing more works, hiring more than usual, doing meetings, adding more features and channels. But founders who actually break through the situation and go on next level do the opposite things, they remove before they add anything.
While having these all these conversations, I started receiving the recommendation of this one book which is the source that changed the thoughts about growth. It is free audiobook, named 'The Science Of Scaling', put out by the team that has studied hundreds of companies, where they covered ,
- Why the most businesses revenue revenue revolves around one or two million dollars.
- How to build scalable business model instead of just doing a to do list about growth.
- Practical framework to scale without burning out the best people in your team.
I am not affilicate with them in any ways, but the insights were the game changer for few founder I know.
Happy to share this with you all, if you didn't find audio book online, drop the comment, I will share it with you.

And also I would like to hear your thoughts about, what has been your biggest obstacle when you try to grow your business?

I have just started reading the science of scaling by Benjamin Hardy, and it is already making my mind glow with ideas for growing my business.

Has anyone else read it? Would love to hear your thoughts.