BUILD with Blake Bartlett

Peter McKay (Snyk): Leading Through Hypergrowth

Apr 27, 2022

31:22

Hypergrowth is hard. Sustaining hypergrowth is even harder. Leaders need to constantly bring new talent into the organization to avoid plateaus. The tricky part? New talent almost always entails changing roles for existing team members. Peter says the answer is to embrace the pain of difficult conversations to maintain speed.

Key Takeaways:

[2:54] What makes hypergrowth hard for a startup leader?

[5:48] Anticipating plateaus to guide company success, and answering "What could go wrong?"

[9:42] The time to anticipate plateaus is when things are going really well.

[13:56] Early indicators of problems, and staying ahead to scale talent with the organization]

[17:07] Adding specialized talent rather than replacing people

[20:02] How to approach tough conversations

[24:51] Choosing the pain of difficult conversation, and the context of delivering bad news

[27:32] Understand what you're good at and be proactive in finding talent who can do the things you don't like to do

Mentioned in this episode:

Peter McKay, CEO of Snyk

Snyk