How to lead a 170 employees startup?

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When I co-founded InstaCarro at 2015 with only three employees, my role was completely different from what is today with one-hundred-seventy.

In this post I’ll try to describe the main challenges I faced in this transition and the main lessons I learnt.

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1.Delegation:

When InstaCarro started growing we started hiring highly-motivated, self-esteemed and experienced managers. As the managers’ motivation came from feeling accomplished and self-esteemed, the rules of the game changed. Until that moment, I was used to solve all the problems the company had. From talking to investors to calling the AC technician.

However in this new context doing things myself didn’t help anymore. I rapidly noticed that my job was no longer about getting things done myself; but enabling others to get things done on their own. Getting directly involved in the execution of projects ended up de-motivating and generating defensive attitudes among my leadership team. This meant I needed to let my team reach to the answers and solutions that the business needed by themselves.

See my post about delegation here

2. Motivating and inspiring

Delegating may mean that sometimes solving specific problems may take longer. However, if you are able to effectively motivate your team, your execution power will grow 10 times and your job will become much more impactful.

One useful way of motivating and inspiring your team that has been very effective for me is asking them to define objective for themselves. Delegating this work will make them feel empowered and happy.

3. Trust and courage


One of the most important leadership skills an entrepreneur should learn is how to trust his team. Most of the people that’s working in your startup are probably there because they value independence and want to generate change by themselves.

“Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.” STEPHEN R. COVEY

If you do not sufficiently trust your managers to delegate the execution you either lack the courage you need to lead the company or is time to think in hiring new managers in which you can really rely on.

4. Coordination

When you have a couple of managers reporting to you is important you make sure everyone is at the same page and that communication flows. This is not easy as dealing with people is not a science.

As the company grows and more people start joining it will become harder motivating them and having everybody in the same direction. If the company grows big enough, internal teams may start forming. This is something you want to avoid at all costs!

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

It’s important that as a leader you make sure everyone is united and in the same page. Some tips that have been extremely useful for me were:

Foster discussion:

Join your team regularly to discuss random problems. Highlight the importance of solving things as a team and not individually. Sometimes giving an individual owner to a problem is useful for ensuring things get done, but sometimes is also good to build a team to solve a problem. In this way the problem becomes a company one and not an individual one. Let your team discuss, and solve the problems by themselves.Try not to give your opinion on the issue. Despite you may not agree with the direction the meeting is taking is important you keep yourself as quiet as possible to make them feel empowered. With time your team will start meeting by themselves proactively and solving problems without you needing to call for a meeting.

• Do not take sides:

It’s important you try not to take sides. If you do, ego’s and insecurities inside individuals may arise and you may start forming teams inside your company. In case you feel you really need to take sides, try doing this in a neutral way, maybe asking a question to foster more discussion. Quoting company’s values and mission is always a very useful way to do this without making feel people is something personal

• Save face:

People in South America are very worried about their esteem and do not like to be contradicted in public. If you want to talk about something you didn’t like, do it in private!

In order this to happen is important you foster a good work environment. Your team must feel comfortable to give feedback to each other in a constructive way. Once again to avoid chaos is important you stop executing projects by yourself.

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