The fundamental lesson of the forces governing scaling startups
Idealistic founders believe they will break the mold when they scale, and not turn into a “typical big company.” By which they mean: Without stupid rules that assume employees are dumb or evil, without everything taking ten times longer than it should, without wall-to-wall meetings, without resorting to hiring anything less than the top 1% of the talent pool, and so on.
Why do they never succeed? What are the fundamental forces that transform organizations at scale?