I commented every pixel. Disguised as quality.

Founders start as the bottleneck. All decisions run through you, because in the beginning, they have to.

For quite a while, I double-checked everything, even as the team grew: every pixel on the website, every offer we sent out. I told myself it was about quality. Some of it was. But mostly, it was comfort. Details felt safer than the bigger, harder questions.

The result: my attention went everywhere except where it mattered most.

Not noticing when it stops being true

Being the bottleneck is normal at the start. The mistake is not noticing when that stops being true.

Find people you can trust. And trust them.

One of my biggest learnings: find people you can trust – and then trust them.

I was lucky. I had people on my team who were simply better at their craft than I was. To name just a few: Martina Zopf built a team culture I never could have designed myself. Annet Izhar kept our e-commerce processes running with a precision I could never have matched.

Of course, I still brought input and direction. But having an idea is one thing; bringing it to life is another. Letting go only worked because I trusted them more than I trusted my own need for control.

You really notice whether you have let go the moment you are out of the loop for a few weeks. In my case, everything kept running without me.

What I tell founders today

Building a company from zero to twenty people needs a different founder than scaling it from twenty to two hundred. Different skills – sometimes a different person entirely.

What is the one thing you still can't hand over?

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