79: Lucid President and COO Dave Grow- giving away your legos

Lucid, a visual collaboration platform most known for its original product Lucidchart, has grown from a zero revenue company to a wildly successful startup, now passing 30 million users and 100 million in revenue. Lucid only continues to grow, transitioning more recently to a multi-product platform and always advancing its mission of ease-of-use for knowledge workers.   David Grow has been with the company almost from the start, giving him unique insights into the changes you have to go through at a company moving from small to giant. President and COO Dave Grow joins Scott Britton and Andrei Newman on the Built by Humans Podcast to discuss his approach to strategy, hyper-growth, self-awareness, and patience. Here are some quick takeaways: With growth comes a greater need for disciplined strategy. Expect a formal timescale for a meeting on strategy every 2-3 years, and make sure your plan for the future still connects your mission to your customers. The ability to be everything for everyone is just becoming a possibility and relies upon your end-user needs. If your product meets an inconsistent end-user need, you may need to work vertically. If your product solves a problem across companies of all sizes, you can work horizontally and market to a large number of people. High growth situations mean you’ll have to “give away your legos” and partition off what was your responsibility to new hires. Leaving ego aside while others do what you used to is necessary for this. Self-awareness is key to making the right future career decisions. The goal is to know when there’s still more for you to do at a company but to also accept and know when you’re not needed anymore, and when it’s best to move to a different project. In the SaaS world, tons of stress is put on speed. On the contrary, be comfortable with waiting. Have patience with the process and with your employees: most great companies take around 10 years to get where they are, and many employees need patience and second chances to step into their role.  

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In this podcast, we are here to discuss the challenges high growth companies face and how to overcome them. We will be focusing on the human parts of work and how you can create a culture that brings out the best in your people and unlocks their full potential.