#47 JooBee's newsletter (SE)

TL;DR

Summer special edition: Mugs ‘L’ Us parable (pt 1/3)

🔐 When founders won’t let go, how do you unlock delegation?

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Pt 1: When founders won’t let go, how do you unlock delegation?

I’ve seen it time and again — every start-up I’ve worked with hits the same growth curve as they scale. The symptoms may vary, but the root challenges are remarkably similar.

The Greiner Curve maps this journey across 6 phases. Each begins with stable, evolutionary growth and ends in a crisis point that demands a step change. That’s when the revolutionary stage kicks in — marked by chaos, transformation, and often, growing pains in leadership, structure and process.

The speed each business moves through this lifecycle depends on its age and size, stages of evolution and revolution and most significantly, the growth rate of its industry.

Let’s see if the fictional story below rings a bell.

Once upon a time in start-up land…

Two friends had a bold idea: left-handed mugs for left-handed people. Enter the founders of Mugs ‘L’ Us.

📈 PHASE 1: Growing through ‘Creativity’

With a £250,000 loan from Chen’s parents, they had a ~12-month runway to prove product-market-fit and pitch to investors. They brought on 3 trusted friends across Finance, Biz Dev and Product & Tech.

No one stuck strictly to their roles. Chen jumped from customer calls to pitch decks to product ideas. Olga did everything else; from hiring, workspace lease negotiations to sourcing the manufacturing and production of their bespoke mugs. Titles didn’t matter. What mattered: getting shit done.

Morning or night, you’d find the 5 in their tiny Shoreditch coworking space — fuelled by coffee, excitement and the drive to conquer the market. £250,000 didn’t stretch far, but the promise of equity made up for the long hours and modest pay.

Being close to customers gave them an edge. Feedback turned into decisions instantly — a quick swivel of the chair, a whiteboard scribble, a real-time pivot. The left-handed community noticed.

In 6 months, they’d shipped 10,000 mugs, had a growing waitlist and secured 3 B2B contracts. By the end of year one, they’d outgrown their spreadsheet, office and team and secured Series A funding.

The funding came with conditions: grow the team, the customer base and make profit. So the first priority: fix manufacturing. Olga had juggled it so far and done a brilliant job. But now, they needed someone who’d scaled supply chains before.

Enter Matt, Head of Manufacturing, experienced, credible and a strong culture add.

💥 END OF PHASE 1: Hitting the ‘Leadership Crisis’

But the handover wasn’t smooth. Olga was a bit too… helpful. As much as she was behind the idea of having an experienced person, but experiencing a bit of difficulty handing the reins over. 

She was dropping into Matt’s meetings, offering suggestions, reviewing his plans. The team felt it. One new hire asked, “Are we following Matt’s plan or Olga’s?” Another went to Olga directly for guidance.

It was slowing things down.

Matt spoke to the founders. Olga admitted it: she felt displaced. She’d gone from holding it all together to watching from the sidelines. Chen reminded her — this wasn’t about losing control, but levelling up. With Matt in place, Olga could now focus on scaling the company, not just running it.

They agreed on boundaries. No more drop-ins or uninvited feedback. Just one weekly check-in — strategic, focused.

It wasn’t easy. But over time, she saw the shift: a more confident Matt, a sharper team, and a business moving faster than ever.

📈 PHASE 2: Growing through ‘Direction’

With £5M in Series A funding, Mugs ‘L’ Us scaled fast — growing from 30 to ~70 employees in 6 months. New hires across Manufacturing, Engineering, Marketing, Sales and Customer Success meant each function now had specialists with experience to solve more complex functional challenges, instead of everyone doing everything. They finally said goodbye to spreadsheets and rolled out proper systems.

And things are booming for Mugs ‘L’ Us. Sales grew 800% in the UK.  Matt cut production costs by 30%. Olga admitted he was the right hire, and stepping back gave him the space to deliver.

Momentum was strong, and investor confidence followed. A new round was secured to fund their expansion into EMEA. But before they could ride that wave...

Coming in the next newsletter…

Chen and Olga have survived their first crisis — but the real scaling tests are just beginning.

• What happens when growth breaks communication?

• When structure stifles speed?

• When the founders must step back — again?

In Part 2, we dive into Phases 2 to 4 of the Greiner Curve.
It gets messier from here.

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