[wannabag]

I like the high level CEO view of this problem since it's a good reminder that the overall phase needs re-think. That said, what this article hints to in the title and misses is that there are inherent problems for startups that are in fact related to the number of employees.

Some commentators touched this subject as well and rightly so, when you reach around 20-40 employees you start having problems that are organizational. If not addressed properly these will cripple growing startups and in some cases even prevent them from reaching the next stage.

I went through a couple of these failures myself and I can't stress it enough when discussing problems related to growth; there is a point when you can no longer communicate or work in the same way and you can't expect things to self organize. It takes quite some reorg including some hard decisions to get to a stable stage or in the best of case, transit smoothly but that takes someone very well aware of all the pitfalls.