What Is The Technical Founder Paradox?

essentially, the technical founder paradox. It's  a name that we've given to the idea that there   comes a time in the natural lifecycle for many  small and medium businesses where the depth of   knowledge and skills that were required to really  launch the business and to gain that initial,   market penetration and market, share, actually  ends up becoming a bit of a roadblock,   that keeps the company from being able to push  through that next hurdle and continue to grow in  

scale. There's four questions or elements that  I think would be interesting for us to explore   in our conversation. so what is it and how does it  happen? where do we see it and kind of what does   it look like? what are some warning signs that we  can try to identify whether or not we are falling   into this technical founder paradox trap? and  then ultimately, what can we do about this?

you know, in that. In that keynote, I was talking  about like, a high tech, you know, like, ICT,   those types of things, saying, this is very common  when, you know, very technical positions. The,   you know, this, leadership team that is. That  creates it can end up becoming, you know,   having a difficult time with scalability when  the skills that got them to where they are not   the skills that they need to get to it, to the  next stage. And had a few people actually come.  

I've had a few conversations since then. People  have referenced that. And, so it's funny because,   we mentioned it in our last episode, and we've  had some comments from listeners about that, too.   So it's something that I think, I'm really glad  that we're taking a whole episode talk about it,   because it is something that is that people  seem to really kind of be connecting with.

business around that. We identified a market  gap. We have m solutions to fill to fix the   problems that we see in them in this marketplace,  and we've kind of constructed our business around   that. That is a very natural progression. And  how many, many businesses start? A founder or  

group of founders have a deeper, deep technical  knowledge around a particular niche or industry,   and they build a business, from the ground up  to solve the problems that they've identified   within that industry. And by doing that,  you can, when you're small and nimble,   you're able to respond and react very quickly.  you're able to use your deep technical knowledge  

to kind of guide the growth of the company. The  paradox that we're talking about, where that   kind of comes into play is once you're beyond that  initial startup phase and the company is growing,   you're adding employees. you're adding layers  or levels of authority within the company.   and the founders are no longer required to do a  lot of the work. Now, they still have to do a lot   of work, but they're not doing a lot of the day to  day, hands on development of product service work.

a m mismatch of skill sets. And now they have. Now  they're in a position where the depth of knowledge   that they have is not equal to the breadth of  responsibilities that they need to perform.

skills. And when we say the technical founder,   we mean that person that is an expert on the  technical components of their jobs. But again,   that, you know, but like, we've seen this  in, you know, the hospitality industry,   we've seen this in the education industry, we've  seen it in tech, we've even seen it in nonprofits.   It's not that it's about the person that has  this, you know, this doctorate of engineering,  

and it's only about that. It's about if someone  has a great depth of knowledge in the technical   aspects, like the work, the product, the service  aspects of an industry. And like I said, create a   business to fill that need. And that need is doing  well, then they're, they at some point hit a wall,   and it's in the wall is usually around when 

they're trying to scale the business. That   the skills that got them to the success they  have today are the exact likely skills are   going to hold them back as, they try and move  up to this. They try and level up the business.

delivering, services in the community. That was  their intent. If you've ever worked in a nonprofit   or anything that's reliant on government funding,  then you understand the sheer volume of paperwork   that's involved in the formation and the,  accessing grants and reporting requirements and   all of the, what I would find mind numbing aspects 

of that, the administrative requirements. It is   foundational and fundamental and so important in  the formation of a not for profit that that skill   set is absolutely essential. And what we saw was  a, founder. The person who kind of kicked this   organization off, had a very strong skillset in 

that they were an excellent administrator. They   were able to chase, funding, they were working  with partners, they were reporting on it,   they were able to keep very busy in making  sure that everything in terms of the reporting   requirements were handled very, very well. Where  they ran into problems was on the people side.   Once it required people to deliver services,  they unfortunately were out of their element.

of a nonprofit. And this person kind of had  both the infrastructure role, like, you know,   startup administrative pieces down cold, and  they had a deep knowledge of the, of the topic,   of the services that they provided, but  they did not have the leadership skills,   the management skills, the, the stakeholder  engagement skills that they needed to actually   kind of move the organization to reach what its 

funders and stakeholders had in mind for it. And,   and that problematic piece was, you know, they,  again, they hit the wall and then they were very,   very, very busy every day. But those that were  relying on the outcomes that they were supposed   to provide were not seeing it because they didn't  have the ability to empower, mobilize and provide   it, you know, through, through employees, they,  they hit the wall. They couldn't do any more of   it on their own. They needed to trust and have 

the people to deliver it for them. And they   couldn't maintain this. They couldn't have  employee retention to provide consistency.

You should not try to do everything yourself. But  you need to know enough about all of the different   elements of running and growing a business so  that you can be, hold accountable those who you   empower to take on those other responsibilities.  You need to know enough about marketing and sales   to understand, whether or not you're vp of sales  is actually delivering on what they need to do.   Same with operations, same with human resources, 

same with, finances. Or procurement. You don't   need to be able to have the bread, the depth  of knowledge to do that job in every, instance,   but you need to have the breadth of knowledge  to understand what's happening and make sure   that it is, driving the organization along  towards fulfilling its goals and strategy.

about scalability. Because one thing that I think  we should just kind of clarify first is that,   not every business, will hit this problem,  because, again, when you're talking about,   you saw this a lot when you were working in  economic development. You should tell a lot  

of stories of some cool small businesses. And  I remember, one story always sticks to my mind   that I brought up a few times, I think, was when  you were working with this, kind of mid sized,   bakery, and a really wonderful, woman who  was the founder and everything like that,   too. And she had no intention of turning her  medium sized bakery into a global conglomerate.   It was always going to be that lifestyle  type business where it's where she gets to  

spend her time baking. She still has a lot of  the management stuff to do, but she doesn't.

She knew what she was good at, she knew what,   more importantly, she knew what she wanted from  her business, and she knew when she achieved it.

and had a great impact on her community. There  was a ceiling on how successful she could be with   her structure, and she was cool with that, and  she wanted to stay on this side of it. And there   is nothing wrong with that. And people in those  situations, those, And there's probably most. A   lot of them are probably in, that situation, and  there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. It's   when you're not okay with that and you want to 

go past that ceiling and you want to scale.That's   one of the, I guess, reflection points that you  need to consider is, am I being impacted by the   technical founder paradox? Because scalability  is what I want to achieve. So then if. If that's   one of your stated goals, then this is something  that you really might want to be thinking about.

accomplish. And that's fantastic. But if you,  like, you've said, if that's not your intent,   if that's not your, strategy to just create  a lifestyle business for yourself and you're,   you really want to achieve that scalability,  then you have to be aware of the problems that   are going to come if you don't properly plan and 

augment your skills and abilities by either. Well,   we'll get into what you can do about  it, but you need to figure out a way   to make sure that you're not falling  into the technical founder paradox.

surpass it. And it's the idea of often is when,   it's when the founder or founders need you or need  to be pulled out of the everyday and need to stop   almost like doing the job that they're technical  experts in and start doing more of that strategic,   higher level leadership, and often the skills  that they may not have built along the way,   or they might be very counter to their natural  skillset. And that's where we really do see this.

caused some problems. Yeah, politely.

to be asking myself these hard questions? Is,   if that's your mindset and your goal, that's  great. But if you're in a situation where you're   still small enough, you haven't built a stability  around your work, that you're still kind of making   decisions, not necessarily strategic decisions,  about long term success, you're really just trying  

to keep the lights on day to day. You're, making  decisions out of desperation or out of necessity   if you're in that situation, and then this is  something that you may find yourself in the   found the technical founder paradox, but you can't  do anything about it. You don't have the ability,   the infrastructure, the cash flow or anything 

to kind of take any other approach. Then you,   as, then you, the founder or the  founders that you're working with,   have to kind of do it all because there's no  other option. The real, so where we kind of say,   when we talk to businesses and we kind of identify 

that we think we're hitting, we're hitting. The   technical founder Paradox is when they do want  to scale and they do have the stability and the   infrastructure, the profitability, that they  can actually do something and actually start to   make those really smart, strategic decisions,  to avoid falling into the paradox and avoid   their current situation, holding back  that big success they're aiming for.

businesses, like they had. So this particular one,   they had started two campuses, acquired two, and  were looking at acquiring or building a third,   I can't remember, but they, like, they had  hundred or so, teacher staff with them,   you know, serving a great, like a good population  of. A lot of things. In a lot of ways, you would   consider this to be, quite a successful small  business, and they were on along a lot, a number  

of dimensions. But the problem was the founder,  while very skilled in the delivery of educational   resources, had major tunnel vision, and was unable  to really remove those blinders and realize that   not only do I now need, like, we're now managing  four and now looking at a fifth and 6th, like they  

had plans to continue growing. Managing that many  sites require somebody who, who's not just skilled   in, as a teacher or as an educator, but as an  administrator, as a leader, as a facilitator,   like facilitating these opportunities and,  resources for the people that they lead. Yeah,   sorry, it's just, it's a, we've seen this so many  times in so many cool businesses that, really   require just a bit of a. Either self awareness  or, some identification of where the problems lie.

to do it. But it was, what they weren't doing was   they weren't taking the time to kind of say, you  know, is the skills that got us to where we are,   what we need going forward, or do we need other  pieces? And I remember this one in particular was   really apprehensive that they needed help because  the idea of, oh, I got this far. So, why can't, Of   course I could take it further, the way the status 

quo is working, so why would we ever change? And,   you know, and it's funny if to you listening,  this might sound like where you work, and I   apologize if it does. but these are the kind of  things where we need to realize this is. This is   not an uncommon problem. I mean, we've seen this.  I mean, I say we again, general, most people have   seen this kind of, with, like, restaurants, you  ever have, like, a really great restaurant that's   like, just killing it and everyone loves it, so 

they're like, wow, let's try and. Let's try and,   you know, open, more locations. And then they  do, and then the business completely collapses.   Not to say that's only because of the technical  founder paradox, but often the. That scalability   goal is they're like, well, what's working for  us while we're small? Well, it'll definitely  

work for us if we get bigger. And that idea of  falling into that paradox where the people that,   you know, got you to where you are, are, you  know, may not have all the skills needed or   all the abilities to get you to the next stage.  So sometimes it is something where, you know,   you really do need to realize that a lot of  businesses that we do see kind of try and hit   that next, hit that next level end up collapsing  and losing their stability because they didn't go  

at it with the right strategic. Strategic intent.  So let's try into some warning signs because,  

to make sure that. To help people identify,  you know, how do I avoid this as we go forward?

engineering, ah, founders. you know,   they had grown the business. they paid well,  especially for, like, they were very competitive,   within their industry and region. but they had  a lot of trouble hanging on to their. Actually,   their. Their field staff were okay because  they were out of the office. But anybody   who was kind of required to have a lot of  regular interactions with the founders,   did not stay because they didn't have those skills 

to be able to manage people effectively. And that   was the blind. The tunnel vision. They had the  tunnel vision on product rather than people.

with stagnating business development. Is that,  you know, when you're not able to, you know,   when you're seeing the difficult times actually,  you know, getting, you know, fulfilling your,   your growth commitments or, you know, or people  are. You're missing deadlines and timelines often,   to be honest, going back to retention because  you don't have the employee base to fill that,   but you kind of feel like you cross a threshold,  you're like, well, why can't. We were able to fill  

it before? Why can't we fill this now? Even  though it's more so that stagnating business   development can be that the growth side of  it is stagnating because you're just not able   to meet your responsibilities, because you just  don't have what's needed to hit that next level.

in performance, and outcomes. And it just, it's  very, still very focused on just that technical,   skill that the founders have. There's a good  chance you are going to hit that wall pretty soon.

that, that's lacking. And what's great about,   you know, about being able to have kind of some  clear warning signs is, again, they're just that,   they're roughly, if you're, you know, you  have this one problem, you definitely have   this technical founder paradox, but these are  the kind of those reflection point questions,   you know, are we seeing issues with retention? Do  we have lopsided growth? Is our stagnation of our   business development happening? Are we trying to 

scale? And do we have, this ability to actually   start to make the effective decisions? Because  we have the stability and we have that cash flow   and infrastructure to allow us to do it. If  all this sounds familiar and comes to mind,   this is a really important point for a business.  Whether you're in the business as an employee or   whether you are one of the, one of the founders  to really kind of say, you know, are we standing  

in our own way? So I think, it would be wise  for us to move on to what can we do about it.

going to need to upskill your own knowledge. Ah,   if you are a solo, ah, founder or even as a team,  then your team is going to, you need to, identify   and build some skills that are complementary to  the technical expertise that you already have   developed. I think I used the language earlier of,  it's the difference between a depth of knowledge  

versus a breadth of knowledge. And I like that  because with the technical founder paradox,   that depth of knowledge was so important  early on, but now you need to take a step   back and look at the breadth of skills that are  required in order to be successful. Upskilling   is absolutely an option there and there are  lots of ways that you can accomplish that.

strategically. We have the structure to allow  me, or me and the leadership team or whatever   to develop these new essential skills to level  up and hit that and hit that, our next goals,   then we have to do that. Because, you know, if  we just, if we're too busy to do it, then we're   just like, okay, we're just hitting the snooze 

button on achieving our goals. And if that's,   that's best reality of it, either you take,  carve out the time and the resources to do it,   or you're just going to hit the snooze button  on your sustainable growth. And I can't always   say it's that the success will wait for you. If  you wait too long, you might miss your window.

and product development. Yes. As the CEO who is   now responsible for all aspects of the business,  you may no longer be qualified for the role that   you are actually performing, which is, again, it  happens very organically and I don't want this to   be a criticism because it really isn't. There's, I  have a tremendous amount of respect for founders,   who are able to grow and build sustainable, ah.  And scalable business. It is not flippin easy.

it's up skill. Another option. So option two is to  build the team you need to achieve those goals. If   you don't have the capacity, the interest or,  you know, the time in order to do that, then   you're going to need to get the, get those skill  sets to you. So this might look like you know,   revising or adding on to your leadership team. 

Maybe your leadership team needs to be beyond   the people that have been around the longest  time, you know, and maybe it needs to be about   bringing the people in that are going to provide  the right, the right insights, the right skill   sets. Right. So we talked, we talked about this  with like strength based teams. We did an episode,   we talked about fit and we outlined kind of  different ideas about how the general specialists  

and everything else like that too. But I mean,  you know, if, if you're people dependent on your   growth and scalability, then hiring people,  experts to help you do that, if you're about,   you know, if you're trying to maintain the most  effective, you know, cost, for your supply in   order to build your products and bringing in  experts in procurement and, you know what I mean?

Whether your fractional person becomes your   CMO or they help you build a marketing team  or whatever it is, you know, it's about,   you know, bringing in the skills that are  going to allow you to have that strength   based approach. You can do more of what you're  good at and you have someone else doing more of   what they're good at and that, and then you  have all you need to hit that next level.

look at permanent people. Whether it's   upscaling people that have been working under  these fractionals for the past four years,   or whether it's bringing them on full time or  whatever it is, your options are available to   you because you, you successfully hit  the next level with strategic intent.

stepping into a niche that you really enjoy. And  I remember working with what, ah, stands out for   me was a company that we were working with that  is kind, of a key component in the supply chain   for mining, industry, providing, equipment, and  safety, safety equipment, a number of different   widgets that are required whole gambit of  things. and the, the owner was such an  

amazing human being. Anyways, they were  hitting this same problem of they were spending   all of their time and energy having to manage the  day to day operations of the business and they   honestly hated that. What they loved to do was to  build the relationships, to be out, networking,   to find new clients, to be more in that sales 

leadership role. And what was so great about   that project was actually being able to work  with the founder, ah, the owner, to put this,   the solutions in place, to identifying somebody  internally that can take over guiding them,   offloading those responsibilities, from the owner  to the new operations manager who could run,   all of the day to day responsibilities. They were  ecstatic because they got a promotion and more  

money. And ultimately the owner was far happier  because he was able to step back from having to do   everything and step into what he really loved to  do, which was meeting with, which was talking. I   mean the guy could talk forever. but he was very,  he was very charismatic, he was very personable.   And you like the, the networking, the  relationship management side was such   a natural gifting for him. Yeah. And it  was so cool to see that develop well.

they had to give it to someone else. It's again,   part of it is like, well, I'm the owner, I should  be the CEO or should be the president. Like,   I mean, like, you know, I'm not going to be  an employee in my own company. Like I, that's   not why I did this. But for some people they're  like, well, the different approaches. Well, why,   why am I, as the owner, the most miserable person  in the company? Why, you know, why can't I worked.

a job that you would love doing. Right.

But the general manager, they kind of still,  they somewhat report to, but at the same time,   like, you know, it's, it can be a bit of a  fine tuning act to try and get the right kind  

of relationship and the right flow going. But I  mean, you know, when you have someone that is,   is vital towards one component, then let them do  that and let other people who have the skills,   background, education, whatever it might be, to  do all, everything else that you don't have to   be as the owner, be the CEO or be the president,  you know, that it is an option to step back and   find your niche. It's not a common one. We don't  see it a lot, but one at least worth considering.

back their ability to hit the next level. Where   we see this, we see this in any business that has  kind of that, the technical expertise of often the   product or service to kind of deliver, or that has  been delivered, and the lack of skills in business   operations, you know, people management or other  aspects that are essential towards the business of   scalability. So again, there's two good reflection  points that people need to realize. You know,  

is this where we are at? And one of them is, you  know, are you moving away from being a lifestyle   business where you're just trying to, where  you're happy with that ceiling and you. And,   you want to, and you're successful as you want to  be, trying to move into a scalable business where  

the sky's the limit? And are you in a situation  where you're not making decisions of desperation   or necessity, where you actually can make the  strategic, smart, long term decisions because you   have the stability, cash flow, infrastructure or  whatever, some warning signs, or if you're falling   into the technical founder paradox is if retention  of core operational, positions is a challenge,   holding on to good people, if you're stagnating  your business development because you're just  

lacking m and missing in the, what's needed for  growth, or if you have lopsided growth where the   area that the founder has significant expertise  in is doing much better than other departments,   and you're not able to kind of, you know, grow  effectively, sustainably, you know, across the   board. So what can we do about it? Well, there's 

three options. We can either upskill ourselves   as the founders to be able to develop the skills  and have a larger, instead of having that depth   of knowledge, having the breadth of knowledge, to  be able to kind of, you know, be able to do all   aspects of our work, we can actually bring in the  people and build a strength based team to have the   expertise around us that allows us to be able  to have these essential required capabilities,   to perform the functions of a scaling business, 

or we can step back and find our niche and just   do the parts that we really enjoy with our  job and other people who have the skills to,   be able to deliver higher, the higher level growth  and scalability, let them worry about that and let   you, as a founder, actually have a job in your  own business that you actually enjoy. All right,  

that about does it for us. For a full  archive of the podcast and access to   the video version hosted on our YouTube channel,  visit www.roman3.ca/podcast thanks for joining us.