The evolution of a founder: The power of letting go

This is cross-posted from the original article published on Forbes.

Starting a company as a non-technical founder means doing it all. Out of necessity, you’re covering everything from fundraising to management of the profit and loss, all things product from design to user experience, plus marketing and more—because at the early stages, it’s just you.

Albeit stressful, it can be one of the most exciting times in your company’s history: From idea to fruition, it all depends on you to grow the business from the ground up. At this time, results are driven directly by the effort you put in, and the impact is more immediate on a smaller scale.

As you rapidly grow your company and bring it to life, you’ll eventually have to hire others to successfully expand. Although this can be scary—the first few hires can often make or break a company—it’s a necessary step to ensure you can get it all done and bring your product or service to market.

Although "solo founders are twice as likely to succeed in business as co-founders," according to MIT researchers, nobody can do it alone. Delegation and learning to trust your team are paramount when building a company from scratch.

The First Hires

Say you’ve just closed your first financing round, and it’s time to shift priorities to maintain steady growth. With a bigger budget and a clear trajectory for development, it’s time to hire the first set of team members.

These hires are crucial, as they'll hopefully become future leaders in the company and help grow your idea into a profitable product or service. As you train them in your current workflow and the processes you’ve started, they'll frequently have ideas for improvement of their own that they want to share with you.

Based on their own experiences, these new team members can be a source of invaluable feedback on how to best improve and grow the company. Once they’re up to speed, you might start to trust them more and more, letting them complete projects on their own and run an entire division (e.g., business development, product design or marketing) of the business.

As you let go of the reins and check their work less and less, the inevitable will happen: They’ll make a mistake and it may even be a costly one, causing financial or reputational damage. This might seem detrimental at the time and you'll likely feel that if it were just you, this never would have happened. You may start to feel the urge to micromanage and dive back into the nitty-gritty to prevent further mistakes from happening—but in reality, this is one of the worst things you can do.

Don’t Give In To Micromanaging

Micromanaging will be one of the biggest barriers to success. Although it might seem useful to have eyes and ears on every aspect of the operation, it only hurts both you and your team. You’ll simultaneously experience burnout while undermining your team’s authority and preventing them from learning from their mistakes.

For first-time founders, it’s important to remember that very seldom is a mistake in the early stages going to destroy the business. Instead of seeing it as catastrophic, try to use it as a teaching opportunity for the team. This will help empower them and allow them to view you as a leader and a coach, which is all the better for the company in the long run.

If you go down the micromanaging route, you run the chance of destroying the ability to teach your team important lessons and build their trust. As you take on more and more of the responsibilities you gave up, you also take away the ability to spend your time on what’s important for the long-term success of the company as the day-to-day tasks pile up.

Allow your team to learn from their mistakes and delegate tasks so you can focus on the higher level: board management, fundraising, hiring and team culture and business development. These key responsibilities separate good companies from great ones, and delegating unlocks your ability to focus on strategic goals and operate at a higher level to continue the forward trajectory of your business.

Implement A Decision-Making Framework

At the end of the day, when it comes to starting a company, there’s only so much time and too much to be done for one person to have a say in everything. Delegating not only helps prevent founder burnout but also empowers teams for future success.

More often than not, founders who don’t delegate tend to be less successful—nobody can do it all on their own, and trying to do so can be harmful. Instead, put a decision-making framework in place that empowers the right people on your team at the right time. For instance, decisions might fall under the following:

• This is my decision, and you all have to commit, even if you disagree.

• This is my decision, but it’s a discussion, and I want input from all of you.

• This is your decision, but I want to give my input in the discussion.

• This is your decision, and you don’t need my input.

Although delegation can be tricky for founders because they live and breathe the company, and it might feel like their baby, delegation is the key to successful growth. Founders can rest assured that the right people are working on the right things so that they can do what the team needs them to do to take the company to new heights.