Startup Growing Pains: How the “13th Hire” broke the culture
A good Idea, the right intentions, and a bit of investment
This is a story from a startup I worked in a while back. One of those early-stage companies where everything starts with a genuinely good idea and an even better reason for building it. The founder had a personal story that drove the business — he’d lived through a frustrating problem, found no good solution, and thought: “I’m going to fix this for everyone else.”
The business took off.
They secured some early traction, pulled in a round of investment, and were ready to scale. It was at that point that I joined the team.
My role? Improve the quality of delivery. And honestly, I was really excited.
Bringing order to the Scrappy Start
The team was passionate, but things were being held together with sticky tape and goodwill. They were making it work, but it wasn’t always efficient or consistent. Everyone had their own way of doing things, which had worked up to that point, but there were cracks.
So, I started putting some structure in place — nothing too crazy; just enough to help us scale without losing momentum:
- Introduced a few key processes
- Standardised delivery so we weren’t reinventing the wheel every time
- Created clear escalation paths so the right people were involved at the right moments
The biggest challenge was Alignment.
Everyone had their habits, and getting people to adopt a shared way of working (not my way, just one way) took effort.
But we got there.
Slowly but surely, the team started to gel around shared principles. We were delivering better, faster, and with less stress. For a while, things were working well.
The Tipping Point: The “13th Hire” Effect
Then things started to shift.
I was listening to a podcast recently with Daniel Priestley, and he talked about the danger of being the 13th person in a startup. You go from being one small, tight-knit team to something more fragmented. Roles formalise. Structures creep in. People stop seeing themselves as one team and start identifying as departments.
That’s pretty much what happened to us.
I don’t remember exactly how many people were there when I joined, but I suspect I was number 13 or close to it. Before long, there were lots of new hires, and with them came subtle changes.
Where there was once one unified team, there were now silos — new departments, crossover, and confusion.
Two mistakes that changed everything
1. They took the investment and built something new
Instead of doubling down on the thing that worked — the core product that had earned them funding — they decided to start building a brand new thing.
I’ve said this before: if your business has one core pillar, and you want to build a second, that second thing has to be funded by the first. If you start siphoning cash from the thing that works into something unproven, you don’t end up with two solid pillars — you end up with two half-built ones…
… and that’s exactly what happened.
A million pounds later, the new idea was scrapped. And that hit hard — not just financially, but culturally. People had joined to build that thing, and now it was gone. It sent a signal: if a new idea doesn’t work, people are expendable.
2. The culture shifted — badly
That initial team, the original crew? They became the “inner circle.”
Whether it was intentional or not, that’s how it felt. If you joined after a certain point, you weren’t really part of the core. Even senior hires felt like outsiders.
Some of those new people seemed close to the founders, maybe even friends outside work — but they weren’t untouchable either. But once you have that kind of hierarchy baked into the culture, trust falls apart. People stop speaking up. Initiative disappears. Teams segment. No one knows what the real mission is anymore.
On the surface: Transparency. Underneath: Confusion.
One of the strangest parts was that — on paper — we looked transparent.
We had monthly meetings. Every department shared updates. We’d go through financials, targets, wins and losses, cultural values, the mission.
But in hindsight, it wasn’t actually transparent at all.
Yes, we talked about our vision and goals, but what we measured and what we did had almost nothing to do with them.
We said we were there to help customers, but we didn’t track customer impact.
We said we were focused on outcomes, but we prioritised quick wins that boosted revenue even if they chipped away at long-term value.
Transparency isn’t just about showing numbers.
It’s about linking them back to something that matters.
And that was missing. 🫠
Why Process isn’t boring — It’s the thing that Scales
Startups think process is the enemy of creativity.
They want to stay lean, stay flexible, stay fast - but without a plan, without structure, fast just becomes frantic.
“Boring” is profitable. Boring is repeatable.
When you can say, “This is our process. This is how we deliver, and here’s how we review it at every stage,” you’ve built a business, not just a product… and if you can scale the process and the people at the same time, you’re in a really good place.
Alas, most businesses don’t.
They focus on hiring, on shipping, on what’s next. They don’t build systems that adapt as they grow, and then one day they wake up and realise no one knows what’s going on anymore.
What I learned, and what you can steal from it
- Culture is fragile. If you don’t actively manage it, it will default to hierarchy.
- Growth doesn’t fix chaos. In fact, it makes it worse.
- You need a system before you scale — and everyone has to be bought into it.
- Transparency only matters if it’s aligned with reality.
- If you’re taking investment, your strategy has to be clear — not just for growth, but for what happens if things don’t go to plan.
Your investors are betting on your idea and your ability to execute. But if you want to sell that business one day, they’re not just buying your idea — they’re buying the machine that delivers it. If the machine works, it’s valuable. If it’s a mess held together by a few brilliant people and some good luck, it’s a liability.
Final thought: Don’t just move fast… Move well
We all love the idea of moving fast and breaking things, but you don’t have to choose between chaos and slowness. There’s a middle ground — where you move fast enough but stay methodical, strategic and clear.
If you’re a founder, especially at that pre-Series A stage, ask yourself:
- What’s our process?
- What happens when we reach 15 people?
- What are we doing to protect culture while we scale?
- When we get investment, how will we use it to strengthen the core, not just chase the next shiny thing?
Get that right, and you won’t need to fear the 13th hire. You’ll welcome them into a business that’s built to last.
