Startups, SOPs and Scaling: Why You Need Processes

Startups are brilliant at chaos. It's often part of the charm. You move fast, break things, fix them at 11pm, and high-five on Slack. Until you don't.

Because somewhere between 20 and 40 people, things start slipping through the cracks. Onboarding becomes a minefield. Quality becomes inconsistent. And suddenly, you realise the only person who knows how to run that essential process is on holiday in Portugal.

This is where structure comes in. Not heavy, bureaucratic, soul-crushing process. But clarity. Consistency. The kind that lets everyone do great work without 15 back-and-forths in a group thread.

Why Founders Resist Process (and Why That Stops Working)

In the early days, everything is flexible. Everyone knows everything. Culture is absorbed, not taught. Process feels like overkill.

But here’s the rub: informal doesn’t scale. What feels fast now becomes a bottleneck when you're onboarding three new hires a month, half your team is remote, and no one knows who owns what.

The turning point? When you stop having time to explain everything twice. Or three times. Or every single time someone joins.

When Should Startups Introduce SOPs?

You don’t need airtight processes at five people, But by the time you're onboarding regularly and running multiple teams or functions, SOPs aren't optional - they're survival. If you're hearing “we’ve never done this before” on repeat, it’s time.

Red Flags You're Due Some Structure

• You’re hiring fast, but new joiners are spinning their wheels.

• Quality varies wildly between teams or projects.

• Everyone's using different tools or naming files like it's 2010.

• You’re hearing "I didn’t know we had a process for that". Often.
  

How Do You Scale a Startup Team Without Adding Bureaucracy?

SOPs Don’t Mean Bureaucracy, they mean:

• New joiners getting up to speed in days, not weeks.

• Projects that run smoothly without reinventing the wheel.

• Founders not being the human wiki for every internal system.
  

Use Notion. Keep it light. Templates, checklists, naming conventions. You don’t need a playbook the size of War & Peace. You just need enough clarity to avoid confusion, rework and misfires.

What’s the Best Way to Document Startup Processes?

• Build your docs with input from the people who actually use them.

• Use async-friendly tools like Notion, Confluence or Slite.

• Start small: Think "how we hire", "how we release", "how we onboard".

What Not to Do

• Don't wait until it's a mess.

• Don’t build a process in a vacuum - get team input.

• Don’t copy Google’s internal playbook. You’re not Google (yet).

When to Call in Backup

If you’re scaling and still duct-taping hiring, onboarding, and delivery - it’s time to bring in specialists. Work with experienced scale-up partners who understand how to build operational foundations for tech startups, the kind who’ve helped companies grow from 10 to 100+ without losing their edge.

The best startups don’t resist structure. They build the right kind. Just in time.