The scaling advice the most experts agree on: judge candidates on real work and telling questions, not on the resume. 17 experts say it, from Pete Kazanjy in 2022 to Mark Roberge in 2026. We read 516 scaling quotes from 86 experts, each from a dated recording, and sorted them into 30 pieces of advice. 29 were said before 2024 and again in 2025 or later, by at least two people. None shows up only from 2025 on.
Questions
173
Quotes
516
Experts
86
Recorded
2007–2026
What founders ask
We sorted 52,235 comments from three founder YouTube channels into the 22 founder problems. 173 of the 3,016 founder questions were about scaling (5.7%), rank 8 of 22. 140 came from Alex Hormozi's audience.
“How would you scale when CEO reviews each project at a regular cadence and every decision comes top down?”
“In my small skilled labor-based business, I find that the hardest part is dealing with employees. Can you do a video where you discuss how you handle things like disciplinary issues, setting expectations, when to fire and when to train?”
“The hardest part for non-digital products is: how do you fulfill the demand after partnering with a super influencer? Even 3x growth overnight would break us.”
“Hi Alex, how would you scale something that only i know how to do. I can’t really teach someone about my experience/expertise, orjudgment. It doesn’t really work. So how do you scale that?”
Said by at least two experts, at least once before 2024 and again in 2025 or later. The first one has the most experts behind it. The others follow in the same order. Each shows an early and a recent quote, from two different people where the data allows.
Judge candidates on real work and telling questions, not on the resume.
17 experts
· 25 quotes
· 2022 to 2026
20072026
“one of the things I'm a really big fan of is um job simulation especially in in sales”
Quoted: Alex Hormozi, April Dunford, Elena Verna, Eric Ries, Gary Klein, Ian Silber, Jason Fried, Jason Lemkin, Jen Abel, Judd Antin, Karri Saarinen, Kyle Poyar, Luca Ferrari, Mark Roberge, Molly Graham, Pete Kazanjy, and Reed Hastings.
As you grow, hand off real ownership and stop doing the work yourself.
17 experts
· 18 quotes
· 2016 to 2026
20072026
“if you can hire someone to do it for less than your hourly rate hire them”
Quoted: Aaron Levie, Alex Hormozi, Alfred Lin, Bill Campbell, Bob Baxley, Brian Halligan, Christian Idiodi, Jerry Colonna, Mark Roberge, Marshall Goldsmith, Molly Graham, Naval Ravikant, Patrick Lencioni, Ray Dalio, Reed Hastings, Sam Parr, and Stanley McChrystal.
Challenge people directly while showing you care about them.
12 experts
· 25 quotes
· 2014 to 2026
20072026
“you don't have to choose between telling the truth and keeping a friend”
Quoted: Ben Horowitz, Bill Campbell, Chris Voss, Douglas Stone, Jeff Jordan, Jenny Wen, Joseph Grenny, Kim Scott, Michael Bungay Stanier, Patrick Lencioni, Ray Dalio, and Stanley McChrystal.
Prove the model repeats before you scale headcount or spend.
12 experts
· 21 quotes
· 2018 to 2026
20072026
“Do not act like a big company before you ready. It kills you.”
Quoted: Aaron Levie, Alex Hormozi, Bob Baxley, Elena Verna, Greg Isenberg, Jason Lemkin, Jen Abel, Mark Roberge, Marty Cagan, Pete Kazanjy, Rob Fitzpatrick, and Sam Parr.
Hire for learning speed, drive and character over years of experience.
12 experts
· 17 quotes
· 2023 to 2026
20072026
“hungry and high potential person who's dedicated to Growing quickly can build more value for the business than a status C or experienced person”
Quoted: Alex Hormozi, Alfred Lin, Brad Jacobs, Christian Idiodi, Elena Verna, Jenny Wen, Karri Saarinen, Katie Dill, Luca Ferrari, Ray Dalio, Reed Hastings, and Tara Seshan.
Push decisions down to the people closest to the work, and give them the context.
11 experts
· 15 quotes
· 2013 to 2026
20072026
“if the plan falls apart whatever we can do to accomplish this outcome is good”
Quoted: Bob Baxley, Caitlin Kalinowski, Christian Idiodi, Elena Verna, Jenny Wen, Jim Collins, John Whitmore, Ken Kocienda, Marty Cagan, Michael Bungay Stanier, and Stanley McChrystal.
Stay close to the product and the front line, however big you get.
11 experts
· 14 quotes
· 2019 to 2026
20072026
“he wanted to see from the person who did the work”
Quoted: Alex Hormozi, Brad Jacobs, Evan Spiegel, Jared Fuller, Jason Fried, Jenny Wen, Jessica Hische, Ken Kocienda, Kim Scott, Molly Graham, and Stanley McChrystal.
Fix the system before blaming the person, because shame does not change behavior.
11 experts
· 12 quotes
· 2007 to 2026
20072026
“it's not a good idea to turn to people and say well you did that wrong”
Quoted: Christian Idiodi, John Whitmore, Joseph Grenny, Kim Scott, Marc Andreessen, Marshall Goldsmith, Michael Bungay Stanier, Molly Graham, Patrick Lencioni, Stephen Rollnick, and William R. Miller.
Turn recurring work into checklists and systems so nobody redoes it.
11 experts
· 11 quotes
· 2017 to 2026
20072026
“checklists are the key to life you know in a way one of the things that I'm smart enough to figure out”
Quoted: Aaron Levie, Alex Hormozi, Bob Moesta, Brad Jacobs, Cal Newport, Claire Vo, David Allen, Garry Tan, Jessica Hische, Lisa Lahey, and Melissa Perri.
Make hard people calls quickly, and keep only those you would fight to keep.
10 experts
· 16 quotes
· 2014 to 2026
20072026
“if you can't work with other people you can't work here”
“setting highly specific concrete um objectives to which career progression or pay are tied uh almost invariably leads to bad outcomes or inferior outcomes.”
Quoted: Ben Horowitz, Gary Klein, Jerry Colonna, Jim Collins, Karen Kimsey-House, Lulu Cheng Meservey, Patrick Lencioni, Shaan Puri, Stanley McChrystal, and Stephen Rollnick.
More time-tested advice
The rest of the time-tested advice, with its early and its recent expert. Each name links to the quote.
Shape each role around a person's natural strengths instead of forcing them to change.
New advice is said by at least two experts, every time in 2025 or later.
No advice meets that bar this quarter.
How the questions moved
Scaling's share of all founder questions in each half-year, with a 95% range.
H2 20235.4%
H1 20244.6%
H2 20246.2%
H1 20255.8%
H2 20255.4%
H1 20266.6%
H2 2026 (to Sep)9.4%
Dark bar: share of founder questions. Light band: 95% range.
The share was highest in H2 2026 (to Sep) (9.4%, 11 questions) and lowest in H1 2024 (4.6%, 36 of 787). The ranges overlap, so the change may be chance.
Where experts disagree
Two named experts give opposite scaling advice in 11 places. Each split comes from a Gavel framework page.
All splits
locates the difference in the person: personal humility joined to indomitable will, with ambition pointed at a cause bigger than yourself. He argues it is a place you can grow into, and uses the last decade of Steve Jobs as the evidence.
locates it in the machine. Build an idea meritocracy where thoughtful disagreement is designed into the room and opinions are weighted by track record, not seniority, and the organisation stops depending on one person having the right character.
says breakthrough is cumulative, not decisive, and asking which push caused it is, in his words, a nonsense question. You keep turning the same wheel in a consistent direction until the momentum becomes visible from outside.
points out that a network product has a threshold before any of that applies. Below the atomic network, some number of people connected at the same time doing the same thing, the wheel is not slow, it is disconnected, and pushing harder changes nothing.
locates the problem in the system. Believability-weighted decision making inside an idea meritocracy designs thoughtful disagreement into the room and sets the weight of each opinion by track record, not seniority or confidence.
locates it in the individual. Resulting, motivated reasoning and hindsight bias are the primary source of decision errors, so the work is personal process: pre-set criteria, kill conditions, and separating decision quality from outcome.
holds that revenue plateaus around seven to ten million the moment the entrepreneur becomes the bottleneck, and that the escape is delegation and systems, which is labor leverage.
treats silence as the expensive failure. Ruinous empathy, withholding a hard truth to spare someone's feelings, is in her account the most common and most damaging communication mistake, and the fix is to challenge directly while showing you care.
starts from the reader. Put yourself in the audience's position first, and let warmth and generosity earn the right to be heard. Directness that arrives before trust reads as an attack, whatever the speaker intended.
treats team health as the precondition for everything above it. Build vulnerability-based trust first and debate becomes the pursuit of the best answer; skip it and the same debate becomes politics, where people manoeuvre to win rather than to be right.
ran Intel's RISC debate to a correct conclusion and accepted the wreckage. Half the people who had worked on the processor left, and by his own account those relationships never healed. He calls the debate itself one of the most important ways of handling the question.
defines culture from day one through rules specific enough to enforce, imposed top-down. Respect for a founder's time becomes a $10-a-minute fine for lateness. His claim is that specificity is the whole mechanism, because a vague value cannot be obeyed or broken and therefore changes nothing.
Shaan Puri and Alex Hormozi
argue against pre-defining values at all. Watch what the company already does under pressure, then name and codify the behaviours that emerged on their own. On this reading a dictated value competes with the real norm and usually loses.
rules out talk about the past once a behavior is chosen. Colleagues give one or two ideas for the future, the person says thank you, and nobody debates what already happened.
argues for criticism given in person and as close to the event as you can, about the specific work. In her account silence is the costly failure, and a review that waits has already waited too long.
argues that no single leader can move every piece in a fast, complex fight. Build the shared picture, push authority down until it feels uncomfortable, and act as a gardener who sets up the conditions. He says a leader who keeps a hand on every chess piece will lose.
Brian Chesky
argues that leaders should be deeply involved in the details. Being in the details is how he understands how his teams perform and drives the company forward, and he does not count it as micromanaging.
argues a company is a professional sports team, not a family. If you would not fight to keep someone and you think you can recruit better, you pay a generous severance and make the upgrade.
Brian Halligan
counters that outside candidates look shiny in interviews and you have not seen their warts, so managers overrate them and underrate homegrown people. When the call is close, he gives the internal person the shot.
puts every company he buys on one ERP, one HR system, one CRM and one culture, starting the day the deal is signed. He calls a roll-up that leaves its companies on separate systems a mess that whoever buys it next has to fix.
Michael Girdley
runs his holding company radically decentralized. On Greg Isenberg's How to start a Holding Company episode he pointed to Berkshire Hathaway, Roper and Andrew Wilkinson, who keep purchasing, HR and finance inside each company instead of centralizing them.
Advice that one expert gives, or that has no quote from before 2024 yet. Not counted above.
Coach by asking questions, not by handing out answers.
Too soon to call
· David Placek, Jerry Colonna, Kim Scott, Marshall Goldsmith, Michael Bungay Stanier, Seth Godin, Stephen Rollnick, and William R. Miller
· 11 quotes, 2024–2026
Method
Quotes: 516 verified quotes from Gavel's expert cards tagged with scaling. Each quote was checked word for word against the recording, and each card links to the moment it was said. 86 people are quoted.
Dates: a quote is dated by its recording's upload date on YouTube. An old talk uploaded late counts from the upload. 156 quotes are from before 2024 and 295 from 2025 or later.
Advice: we read every quote and wrote 30 short statements of advice. A classifier (Jev) then placed each quote under one statement, or under none. It agreed with our own reading on 396 of 516 quotes. 387 quotes landed under a statement.
Quotes shown: for each piece of advice we show quotes where the classifier and our own reading agree. We skip a quote that is too short to state the advice on its own. It still counts.
Time-tested: at least two experts, with one quote from before 2024 and one from 2025 or later. New: at least two experts, with every quote from 2025 or later. Both cut-off years move forward when a new year starts.
Questions: 52,235 comments from a16z, Alex Hormozi and Lenny's Podcast, from the second half of 2023 to September 2026. A classifier (Jev) marked which ones ask for help and sorted those into the 22 founder problems. The ranges are 95% Wilson intervals.
Limits: the quote mix follows which recordings Gavel holds, and 295 of 516 quotes are from 2025 or later. Advice can look new only because older recordings of it are missing. Most questions come from one channel's audience.
Refresh: every quarter we add new quotes and questions and rerun the counts. This page is as of Q3 2026. Next refresh: January 2027.
Cite
Cite as: Arun Agrahri, “Scaling advice for founders: what has held and what changed,” Gavel, as of Q3 2026, https://usegavel.com/research/what-founders-ask/scaling
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