Let’s be real here—Project Management and Business Process Management aren’t the most exciting topics for a startup founder to think about. I get it.
When you’re in the trenches, fighting for survival, dealing with timelines and task ownership feels about as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Especially if you’re a practical entrepreneur or a techie. There is this notion these management methods are for big, slow-moving corporations and have no place in the scrappy, fast-paced world of startups.
But here’s the thing: when you’re starting out, it’s just you, your co-founders, and maybe a couple of early employees. You’re all doing everything—building, selling, marketing, putting out fires, and somehow making it work. And it works because you’re small. Everyone is on the same page, driven by the same vision and vibes. But if your startup is any good, you’re going to hit that “next level.” And that’s when the wheels can start to come off.
I’ve been there. I’ve worked with teams that started with just a few people, everyone juggling ten different roles, operating on passion and caffeine. But I’ve also watched these same teams hit walls as they grew—because what worked in the beginning doesn’t scale. Without some structure, chaos creeps in, and the “we’ll figure it out” approach that once felt so appropriate, now causes workforce problems and leads to significant operational lapses.
Often, the founding team is convinced that what got them to this point is what will carry them forward. And sometimes, that very mindset is the downfall of a startup. You create this “immune system” that rejects any attempt to bring in structure, and that’s what ends up stifling growth.
Take Stripe, for example, the Collison brothers were developers at heart. They wanted to scale fast and avoid the bureaucratic nonsense that often slows down large companies. But as Stripe scaled, they realized utilizing management methodologies was not about slowing them down—it was about keeping them from tripping over their own feet.
Claire Hughes Johnson (ex-COO of Stripe), in her Podcast World episode “Lessons from scaling Stripe,” talked about the importance of effective planning and progress tracking. In that interview, she said: “I think a really important role for, definitely managers, and also some leaders is to create stability when there doesn’t feel like a lot is stable, and where stability comes from is Ritual, and in common practices that you share.”
Project management and business process management aren’t about stuffing your startup into a rigid, corporate box. It’s about giving your team the tools to grow without losing the heart of what makes you a startup. There are so many ways to approach it, the key is not to see it as a burden, but as a way to keep the chaos from becoming the thing that holds you back.
The bottom line? Skipping implementing these efforts might feel like the scrappy, startup thing to do, but it’s one of the biggest risks you can take as you scale. When your team grows and your customer base multiplies, having a system in place is the difference between thriving and burning out.
