We Need Some Adults In The Room

Personal Account By Brad Magrath

I’ll never forget the first time an investor told me, “We need some adults in the room.” I was a co-founder in my 40s at the time, so the feedback triggered.
That said, we were stuck. Growth felt like trudging through mud in wellies or stumbling home drunk with friends—unpredictable and messy.
What they meant by “adults” were experienced professionals who’d done it before. But here’s the thing: we were doing something that hadn’t been done before. In big, established companies, you’re often executing proven strategies. You know if you do A, B, and C well, you’ll get X, Y, and Z. At scale, you need experienced managers to run the show and organize complex systems.
But in a scaling startup? You’re still figuring things out. You’re experimenting, learning, and creating a scalable model. Bringing in those experienced managers too early can stifle innovation and slow things down.
Early on, you need innovators, specialists, and doers who can run imperfect systems while constantly evolving and improving them. The goal isn’t perfection; it’s progress.
Over time, I’ve learned two key principles:
Right people, at the right time.
Codify your business system, not individual performers. The system (in whatever form that takes to support performance at each stage of growth) should be the star.
If you throw people at problems without a performing and codified system in place, the problem wins. It just absorbs more people and adds complexity.
But when you focus on creating and codifying a solid business system, you empower people to accelerate value creation—not fix holes. That’s when growth and scale take off.
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