A lot of startups get stuck in the mud between 200 and 2000 employees. Here are my tips: 1. Ye old "hire slow and fire fast" is still true. 2. Push off the director layer as long as you can. When you finally need it, promote from within before you hire a career middle manager. 3. Sell the mission hard. When times get rough, it won’t be comp plans that keep people—it’ll be the mission followed by their colleagues. 4. Evangelize: EV > TV > MeV. Enterprise value beats team value beats me value. …People start to solve for TV over EV in this period. 5. Keep your senior team 50/50—half homegrown talent who know the soul of the place, half experienced operators who know what “great” looks like. What things am I missing?