Working Big, Staying Small

So, you’ve got a big idea, and you want to scale this idea so you can make a huge impact and bring home the big bucks. You want to start that company, or a new kind of design conference, or you want to make that non-profit collective thing you and your friends have been talking about a reality. You’ve decided you don’t want to buy things low and sell them high (because you’re being silly), and that you want to work on a big impact project. That’s fine. A kinder person would call it admirable. No matter how you want to slice it, you’re going to need to get way better at navigating the waters. 

And, I know something about the waters: over the past year, I’ve pivoted from working on a B2C product (B2B2C, technically) catering to a maximum market size of maybe 150,000 Caribbean customers, to working on active projects with Caribbean governments, managing the production of software for their entire populations to access. It’s a privilege (read: it pays well enough to allow me to keep making things with the team at PGS), and that experience has been hard-won, but it’s all been so I could finally write this blog post just for you. 

Firstly: I’m assuming whatever you’re selling/making/doing is good. Like, really good. I’m assuming you did the groundwork and checked to make sure that it’s ready for its next big step. I’m also assuming you double-checked this, and have more than a projections spreadsheet behind you.

Now that i’ve disclaimed sufficiently, here’s some things to keep in mind as you want to scale your idea for sustainable growth, while keeping it nice and startuppy.

Credentials matter: see how I started with mine? I know how you are. And, that’s how a lot of people are. If you’re working with governments, you’ll likely also be working with their multilateral partners; if you’re working in the private sector, there’s going to be a board of directors that need to approve your moves (you’re building for big impact, right?). All of these people got to where they are by studying real hard, and putting some real heavy letters after their names. If you don’t have any after yours, you’re going to need to learn their language. Importantly, also, you’re going to need to learn what they care about. It may not be what you care about.

Make friends: You're not going to make it if people don’t like you. Everybody doesn’t have to like you, not even all people have to like you, but some do, for sure. You will need advocacy in large organisations, and you’re probably bad at wearing a suit. Do what you can to make the right impression on important people on your radar; if you’re an introvert it means identifying people whose advocacy matters, which means being patient, and observant. Go to industry meetups, pay for the conference tickets, and try to meet at least one new person. Pay attention: You’ll see who everyone wants to listen to. They likely won’t be CEOs or Ministers (though, those won’t hurt) but will be people close enough to them to make them essential.

Please be a real business, for the love of all things holy: Don’t let it be that they have to ask you for audited financials. Spend your money slowly on few enough things to make managing your accounts easy, so that it won’t cost you too much money…or let it cost too much money, and pay for it (looking at you, me), but you need certain types of documentation for things like public tenders, government procurements, and multilateral partnerships. Including but not limited to:

• Company articles of incorporation
• An actual bank account, with a letter from the bank that says you’re not a money launderer
• Printed, signed references
• Actual usage metrics (for founders with an AI powered solution leveraging machine data to reduce friction for key stakeholders blah blah blah)
• Organogram (🤭) and Cap table
• Financial projections

Don’t have those? Too hard? No problem, you just won’t get anything done. More for me.

Don’t do it alone: really, don’t. You’re not smart enough. You’re not powerful enough. This is not an affirmation, this is a refutation. You will need to partner up. If you’re a fintech and you don’t have a financial services company backing you, it doesn’t matter how good your technology is. Working in e-Commerce but not with trade groups or working with a Chamber of Commerce? You should be. Maybe you want your team to build that extra JavaScript component just to handle that one use case that may not come up again. Don’t do that: find someone else that’s obsessed with just that problem, and work with them. Do as much as you can to focus on the things you’re good at. You will have enough hard work ahead of you.

Learn a bit about politics: not the boring party politics kind (although that won’t hurt), but the kind that people mean when they say things like “geopolitical”. Understanding the context of the policies, the private-public relationships, and the way that international trends affect big-picture decision makers will be key. Your job is to package your product/solution/business/AI scam like they want it, and that means understanding ministerial agendas, reading economic and other types of research reports, and getting a bit more obsessed with systems more than people (or software). It’s vital work, but it’s not the work they talk about on the Y Combinator blog—I hope it won’t bore you.

Be patient. No, more patient than that: large organisations move slower than you want them to. Always. They won’t not. The kinds of budgets you’re going to want to deal with will require multiple layers of due diligence, so get good at waiting. There will be bureaucracies that will steal your peace and leave you baffled and amazed (and terrified for the public sector), but they’re parts of systems that, frankly, you wouldn’t be able to handle anyway. Their job is to be deliberate; your job is to be convincing enough to skip ahead of line, and smart enough to wait.

I’ve made this post intentionally not about software, or about fonts, or anything in particular, because this isn’t an industry-specific approach. Scaling up means realising that it doesn’t matter what your product is: everything is politics and everything is personal—especially when it isn’t. Big organisations may look like towering fortresses with countless moving parts, but they are built on the trust and advocacy of a few key players who know how to pull the right strings. Your job? Learn the game, learn their language, and for fuck’s sake, don’t skimp on the formalities. This is how you swim with the sharks instead of getting swallowed whole. 

And don’t play yourself—this isn’t the part where I tell you to trust the process or lean on some bullshit entrepreneurial mantra.  You probably don’t need to be a 24/7 hustler, ever. That’s not the vibe. Do get your spreadsheets out, thougyh. It’s going to be hard. Brutal. But if you’re serious about stepping up, expanding your impact, and getting to the scale you need, you’re going to need to be sharper, tougher, and (sorry) more connected than you ever imagined. It’s not about how much you know, or even anymore just who you know—it’s about how well you can play the game.

Now, whether you sink or swim—well, that’s entirely up to you. But here’s hoping you learn to tread these waters faster than I did.

Maybe there’s something I can help you think through? Email me at hello@agyei.design to find out.