Loyalty versus company needs

Lina discusses when founders should replace early hires versus training them, prioritizing company potential over friendships.

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Episode notes

What actually determines whether a founder scales or silently stalls?

In this episode of Follow the Gradient, we sit down with Lina Chong, Partner at HV Capital, to unpack what she’s learned from being on both sides of the table: building and exiting companies, then backing some of Europe’s most successful scale-ups.

It’s a candid conversation about decision-making under uncertainty, founder psychology, and the uncomfortable trade-offs that define real growth.

We talk about:

Why the best founders make fast, irreversible decisions, even without perfect clarity
The dark side of founder identity (and what happens after an exit)
When loyalty to early employees becomes a growth constraint, not a virtue
How resilient founders respond when capital tightens and markets shift
Go-to-market lessons from companies like TravelPerk and Fresha
When European founders should go global and why “home market first” is often arbitrary

Rather than playbooks, this episode focuses on how great founders think, decide, and adapt when the path forward isn’t obvious.

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Our biggest takeaways, including Lina’s perspective on what most founders get wrong when scaling:

https://www.followthegradient.io/p/lina-chong-podcast

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Where to find Lina:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linachong/

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🎙 Follow the Gradient: conversations about building a business from Europe while staying sane.

Follow us:

Melanie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniexgabriel/

Christian: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-woese/