The Founder’s Bottleneck

In the beginning you are the company. You write the code and answer the support emails and design the logo. This is as it should be. The company is a direct extension of your will. But then something good happens. You get a little traction and you hire a few people.

You hire an engineer to help you build faster. You hire someone to handle customer support. You think this will free you up. You think you will finally have time to work on the big picture. Instead you find yourself working more than ever. The engineer needs you to review their code. The support person needs you to answer a tricky question. A decision about a marketing email lands on your desk.

Everything still flows through you. You have not bought yourself time. You have just made yourself the central hub for more and more requests. You have become the company’s bottleneck. This is the moment most founders fail to scale themselves. And when the founder fails to scale the company cannot scale either.

The Doer vs The Director

Your first job as a founder is to be a doer. You have to will the company into existence through sheer effort. But once you have a team your job changes completely. Your new job is to be a director. Your goal is no longer to do the work but to make sure the work gets done well by others.

This sounds obvious but it is a profoundly difficult mental shift. Doing feels productive. You write a piece of code and it works. You close a sale and you see the revenue. Directing feels abstract. You spend an hour explaining a task to someone who will do it slower and maybe worse than you could. It feels inefficient.

Your instincts are lying to you. Every task you continue to do is a task you are preventing someone else from learning. Every decision you hold onto is a decision that blocks your team. The company’s output is no longer your personal output. It is the total output of your team. And a director who insists on playing every instrument will not make a very good orchestra.

A Simple Delegation Checklist

Deciding what to delegate feels risky. What if they mess it up? What if it’s faster to do it myself? These are fears you have to overcome. Here is a simple checklist to run through your weekly tasks. It helps you separate what you must do from what you should give away.

Can someone else do this 80% as well as you? If the answer is yes delegate it immediately. We get stuck on the last 20%. We think the small details we add are critical. They are usually not. That 20% gap is the price of your freedom. It is the cost of buying back your time to work on problems only you can solve. Pay that price happily.

Is this a repeatable process? Do not delegate one off chaotic tasks. That is not delegation it is just dumping. But if you find yourself doing something the same way every week or month that is a process. Write down the five or ten steps. Make it as simple as possible. Then hand the process to someone else. You should be in the business of designing systems not operating them.

Does this task directly involve company vision or fundraising? There are a few things only a founder can do. Setting the overall vision and strategy is one. Being the lead fundraiser is another. Guard these responsibilities closely. But almost everything else is a candidate for delegation. Product design decisions customer support emails server maintenance and sales calls can all be done by someone else. Your job is to find and empower that someone else.

Is this a task you do because you enjoy it not because you must? This is the hardest trap. Maybe you love coding. Maybe you enjoy designing the UI. It is comfortable and you are good at it. But if you have hired someone to do that job you must let them do it. Continuing to do the work you enjoy is a form of indulgence that your startup cannot afford. Your job has changed. You have to fall in love with your new job not cling to your old one.

How to Delegate Without Micromanaging

Delegating is not just about assigning tasks. It is about transferring ownership. If you do it poorly you create more work for yourself. You spend all your time checking in and correcting mistakes. Here is how to do it well.

First delegate outcomes not activities. Do not say “Send a follow up email to these ten customers”. Say “Our goal is to get feedback from five of our top ten customers this week. You own this goal. Let me know what you need from me to make it happen”. This gives the person autonomy. It lets them use their own brain to solve the problem which is why you hired them.

Second create low stakes opportunities to build trust. Do not make someone’s first delegated project a company critical launch. Give them a small self contained project first. Let them own it from start to finish. For an engineer it could be a small internal tool. For a marketer it could be a single ad campaign. Their success builds your confidence in them and their confidence in themselves.

Finally establish a clear and simple communication loop. Micromanagement comes from a founder’s anxiety. The cure for this anxiety is information. But that information should not come from you constantly asking “How’s it going?”. It should come from a predictable process. A simple weekly email from each person on your team is often enough. Ask for three things.

• What I accomplished this week.
• What I plan to accomplish next week.
• Where I am blocked or need help.

This structure gives you visibility without requiring you to interrupt your team. It replaces chaotic check ins with a calm and predictable rhythm.

Your company’s growth is constrained by its biggest bottleneck. In the early days that is almost always you. Learning to delegate is not a soft skill. It is the core operational skill of a founder who wants to build something bigger than themselves. It is the mechanism by which you scale.

Now, think about your own week.

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description: 'The Founder''s Bottleneck' date: September 2025 created: 2025-09-25T18:05:43.000Z publish: true

In the beginning you are the company. You write the code and answer the support emails and design the logo. This is as it should be. The company is a direct extension of your will. But then something good happens. You get a little traction and you hire a few people.

You hire an engineer to help you build faster. You hire someone to handle customer support. You think this will free you up. You think you will finally have time to work on the big picture. Instead you find yourself working more than ever. The engineer needs you to review their code. The support person needs you to answer a tricky question. A decision about a marketing email lands on your desk.

Everything still flows through you. You have not bought yourself time. You have just made yourself the central hub for more and more requests. You have become the company’s bottleneck. This is the moment most founders fail to scale themselves. And when the founder fails to scale the company cannot scale either.

The Doer vs The Director

Your first job as a founder is to be a doer. You have to will the company into existence through sheer effort. But once you have a team your job changes completely. Your new job is to be a director. Your goal is no longer to do the work but to make sure the work gets done well by others.

This sounds obvious but it is a profoundly difficult mental shift. Doing feels productive. You write a piece of code and it works. You close a sale and you see the revenue. Directing feels abstract. You spend an hour explaining a task to someone who will do it slower and maybe worse than you could. It feels inefficient.

Your instincts are lying to you. Every task you continue to do is a task you are preventing someone else from learning. Every decision you hold onto is a decision that blocks your team. The company’s output is no longer your personal output. It is the total output of your team. And a director who insists on playing every instrument will not make a very good orchestra.

A Simple Delegation Checklist

Deciding what to delegate feels risky. What if they mess it up? What if it’s faster to do it myself? These are fears you have to overcome. Here is a simple checklist to run through your weekly tasks. It helps you separate what you must do from what you should give away.

Can someone else do this 80% as well as you? If the answer is yes delegate it immediately. We get stuck on the last 20%. We think the small details we add are critical. They are usually not. That 20% gap is the price of your freedom. It is the cost of buying back your time to work on problems only you can solve. Pay that price happily.

Is this a repeatable process? Do not delegate one off chaotic tasks. That is not delegation it is just dumping. But if you find yourself doing something the same way every week or month that is a process. Write down the five or ten steps. Make it as simple as possible. Then hand the process to someone else. You should be in the business of designing systems not operating them.

Does this task directly involve company vision or fundraising? There are a few things only a founder can do. Setting the overall vision and strategy is one. Being the lead fundraiser is another. Guard these responsibilities closely. But almost everything else is a candidate for delegation. Product design decisions customer support emails server maintenance and sales calls can all be done by someone else. Your job is to find and empower that someone else.

Is this a task you do because you enjoy it not because you must? This is the hardest trap. Maybe you love coding. Maybe you enjoy designing the UI. It is comfortable and you are good at it. But if you have hired someone to do that job you must let them do it. Continuing to do the work you enjoy is a form of indulgence that your startup cannot afford. Your job has changed. You have to fall in love with your new job not cling to your old one.

How to Delegate Without Micromanaging

Delegating is not just about assigning tasks. It is about transferring ownership. If you do it poorly you create more work for yourself. You spend all your time checking in and correcting mistakes. Here is how to do it well.

First delegate outcomes not activities. Do not say “Send a follow up email to these ten customers”. Say “Our goal is to get feedback from five of our top ten customers this week. You own this goal. Let me know what you need from me to make it happen”. This gives the person autonomy. It lets them use their own brain to solve the problem which is why you hired them.

Second create low stakes opportunities to build trust. Do not make someone’s first delegated project a company critical launch. Give them a small self contained project first. Let them own it from start to finish. For an engineer it could be a small internal tool. For a marketer it could be a single ad campaign. Their success builds your confidence in them and their confidence in themselves.

Finally establish a clear and simple communication loop. Micromanagement comes from a founder’s anxiety. The cure for this anxiety is information. But that information should not come from you constantly asking “How’s it going?”. It should come from a predictable process. A simple weekly email from each person on your team is often enough. Ask for three things.

• What I accomplished this week.
• What I plan to accomplish next week.
• Where I am blocked or need help.

This structure gives you visibility without requiring you to interrupt your team. It replaces chaotic check ins with a calm and predictable rhythm.

Your company’s growth is constrained by its biggest bottleneck. In the early days that is almost always you. Learning to delegate is not a soft skill. It is the core operational skill of a founder who wants to build something bigger than themselves. It is the mechanism by which you scale.

Now, think about your own week.

---

---

description: 'The Founder''s Bottleneck' date: September 2025 created: 2025-09-25T18:05:43.000Z publish: true

In the beginning you are the company. You write the code and answer the support emails and design the logo. This is as it should be. The company is a direct extension of your will. But then something good happens. You get a little traction and you hire a few people.

You hire an engineer to help you build faster. You hire someone to handle customer support. You think this will free you up. You think you will finally have time to work on the big picture. Instead you find yourself working more than ever. The engineer needs you to review their code. The support person needs you to answer a tricky question. A decision about a marketing email lands on your desk.

Everything still flows through you. You have not bought yourself time. You have just made yourself the central hub for more and more requests. You have become the company’s bottleneck. This is the moment most founders fail to scale themselves. And when the founder fails to scale the company cannot scale either.

The Doer vs The Director

Your first job as a founder is to be a doer. You have to will the company into existence through sheer effort. But once you have a team your job changes completely. Your new job is to be a director. Your goal is no longer to do the work but to make sure the work gets done well by others.

This sounds obvious but it is a profoundly difficult mental shift. Doing feels productive. You write a piece of code and it works. You close a sale and you see the revenue. Directing feels abstract. You spend an hour explaining a task to someone who will do it slower and maybe worse than you could. It feels inefficient.

Your instincts are lying to you. Every task you continue to do is a task you are preventing someone else from learning. Every decision you hold onto is a decision that blocks your team. The company’s output is no longer your personal output. It is the total output of your team. And a director who insists on playing every instrument will not make a very good orchestra.

A Simple Delegation Checklist

Deciding what to delegate feels risky. What if they mess it up? What if it’s faster to do it myself? These are fears you have to overcome. Here is a simple checklist to run through your weekly tasks. It helps you separate what you must do from what you should give away.

Can someone else do this 80% as well as you? If the answer is yes delegate it immediately. We get stuck on the last 20%. We think the small details we add are critical. They are usually not. That 20% gap is the price of your freedom. It is the cost of buying back your time to work on problems only you can solve. Pay that price happily.

Is this a repeatable process? Do not delegate one off chaotic tasks. That is not delegation it is just dumping. But if you find yourself doing something the same way every week or month that is a process. Write down the five or ten steps. Make it as simple as possible. Then hand the process to someone else. You should be in the business of designing systems not operating them.

Does this task directly involve company vision or fundraising? There are a few things only a founder can do. Setting the overall vision and strategy is one. Being the lead fundraiser is another. Guard these responsibilities closely. But almost everything else is a candidate for delegation. Product design decisions customer support emails server maintenance and sales calls can all be done by someone else. Your job is to find and empower that someone else.

Is this a task you do because you enjoy it not because you must? This is the hardest trap. Maybe you love coding. Maybe you enjoy designing the UI. It is comfortable and you are good at it. But if you have hired someone to do that job you must let them do it. Continuing to do the work you enjoy is a form of indulgence that your startup cannot afford. Your job has changed. You have to fall in love with your new job not cling to your old one.

How to Delegate Without Micromanaging

Delegating is not just about assigning tasks. It is about transferring ownership. If you do it poorly you create more work for yourself. You spend all your time checking in and correcting mistakes. Here is how to do it well.

First delegate outcomes not activities. Do not say “Send a follow up email to these ten customers”. Say “Our goal is to get feedback from five of our top ten customers this week. You own this goal. Let me know what you need from me to make it happen”. This gives the person autonomy. It lets them use their own brain to solve the problem which is why you hired them.

Second create low stakes opportunities to build trust. Do not make someone’s first delegated project a company critical launch. Give them a small self contained project first. Let them own it from start to finish. For an engineer it could be a small internal tool. For a marketer it could be a single ad campaign. Their success builds your confidence in them and their confidence in themselves.

Finally establish a clear and simple communication loop. Micromanagement comes from a founder’s anxiety. The cure for this anxiety is information. But that information should not come from you constantly asking “How’s it going?”. It should come from a predictable process. A simple weekly email from each person on your team is often enough. Ask for three things.

• What I accomplished this week.
• What I plan to accomplish next week.
• Where I am blocked or need help.

This structure gives you visibility without requiring you to interrupt your team. It replaces chaotic check ins with a calm and predictable rhythm.

Your company’s growth is constrained by its biggest bottleneck. In the early days that is almost always you. Learning to delegate is not a soft skill. It is the core operational skill of a founder who wants to build something bigger than themselves. It is the mechanism by which you scale.

Now, think about your own week.

---

---

description: 'The Founder''s Bottleneck' date: September 2025 created: 2025-09-25T18:05:43.000Z publish: true

In the beginning you are the company. You write the code and answer the support emails and design the logo. This is as it should be. The company is a direct extension of your will. But then something good happens. You get a little traction and you hire a few people.

You hire an engineer to help you build faster. You hire someone to handle customer support. You think this will free you up. You think you will finally have time to work on the big picture. Instead you find yourself working more than ever. The engineer needs you to review their code. The support person needs you to answer a tricky question. A decision about a marketing email lands on your desk.

Everything still flows through you. You have not bought yourself time. You have just made yourself the central hub for more and more requests. You have become the company’s bottleneck. This is the moment most founders fail to scale themselves. And when the founder fails to scale the company cannot scale either.

The Doer vs The Director

Your first job as a founder is to be a doer. You have to will the company into existence through sheer effort. But once you have a team your job changes completely. Your new job is to be a director. Your goal is no longer to do the work but to make sure the work gets done well by others.

This sounds obvious but it is a profoundly difficult mental shift. Doing feels productive. You write a piece of code and it works. You close a sale and you see the revenue. Directing feels abstract. You spend an hour explaining a task to someone who will do it slower and maybe worse than you could. It feels inefficient.

Your instincts are lying to you. Every task you continue to do is a task you are preventing someone else from learning. Every decision you hold onto is a decision that blocks your team. The company’s output is no longer your personal output. It is the total output of your team. And a director who insists on playing every instrument will not make a very good orchestra.

A Simple Delegation Checklist

Deciding what to delegate feels risky. What if they mess it up? What if it’s faster to do it myself? These are fears you have to overcome. Here is a simple checklist to run through your weekly tasks. It helps you separate what you must do from what you should give away.

Can someone else do this 80% as well as you? If the answer is yes delegate it immediately. We get stuck on the last 20%. We think the small details we add are critical. They are usually not. That 20% gap is the price of your freedom. It is the cost of buying back your time to work on problems only you can solve. Pay that price happily.

Is this a repeatable process? Do not delegate one off chaotic tasks. That is not delegation it is just dumping. But if you find yourself doing something the same way every week or month that is a process. Write down the five or ten steps. Make it as simple as possible. Then hand the process to someone else. You should be in the business of designing systems not operating them.

Does this task directly involve company vision or fundraising? There are a few things only a founder can do. Setting the overall vision and strategy is one. Being the lead fundraiser is another. Guard these responsibilities closely. But almost everything else is a candidate for delegation. Product design decisions customer support emails server maintenance and sales calls can all be done by someone else. Your job is to find and empower that someone else.

Is this a task you do because you enjoy it not because you must? This is the hardest trap. Maybe you love coding. Maybe you enjoy designing the UI. It is comfortable and you are good at it. But if you have hired someone to do that job you must let them do it. Continuing to do the work you enjoy is a form of indulgence that your startup cannot afford. Your job has changed. You have to fall in love with your new job not cling to your old one.

How to Delegate Without Micromanaging

Delegating is not just about assigning tasks. It is about transferring ownership. If you do it poorly you create more work for yourself. You spend all your time checking in and correcting mistakes. Here is how to do it well.

First delegate outcomes not activities. Do not say “Send a follow up email to these ten customers”. Say “Our goal is to get feedback from five of our top ten customers this week. You own this goal. Let me know what you need from me to make it happen”. This gives the person autonomy. It lets them use their own brain to solve the problem which is why you hired them.

Second create low stakes opportunities to build trust. Do not make someone’s first delegated project a company critical launch. Give them a small self contained project first. Let them own it from start to finish. For an engineer it could be a small internal tool. For a marketer it could be a single ad campaign. Their success builds your confidence in them and their confidence in themselves.

Finally establish a clear and simple communication loop. Micromanagement comes from a founder’s anxiety. The cure for this anxiety is information. But that information should not come from you constantly asking “How’s it going?”. It should come from a predictable process. A simple weekly email from each person on your team is often enough. Ask for three things.

• What I accomplished this week.
• What I plan to accomplish next week.
• Where I am blocked or need help.

This structure gives you visibility without requiring you to interrupt your team. It replaces chaotic check ins with a calm and predictable rhythm.

Your company’s growth is constrained by its biggest bottleneck. In the early days that is almost always you. Learning to delegate is not a soft skill. It is the core operational skill of a founder who wants to build something bigger than themselves. It is the mechanism by which you scale.

Now, think about your own week.

— Rishi Banerjee
September 2025