What to fix first after a funding round

A new funding round brings a plan for growth and pressure to show progress quickly. The temptation is to hire in every team at once. The companies that grow well usually fix three things first.

Know which customers you’re growing

Before you add people, agree which customers the money is for. Look at the last two years of wins and losses and find the segment where you win most often and keep customers longest. Most of the new spend should go there.

It’s tempting to chase every new market the investors mentioned. Growing a strong position in one segment usually beats a thin presence in four.

Fix how decisions get made

At 60 people, most decisions still go through the founders. At 150, that becomes the bottleneck. Write down who decides on hiring, pricing and product priorities before the new managers arrive, so they know what is theirs.

Keep the list short and review it every six months. It will change as the company grows, and that is fine. What matters is that new people don’t have to guess.

Build the reporting before you need it

Investors will ask for the same few numbers every month. Set them up now, from one source, with one owner. A board pack that takes a week to build each month takes that week from the people you hired to grow.

• Revenue by segment and by product

• New, expanding and lost customers

• Cash, burn and months of runway

• Hiring against plan

Then hire

With those three in place, the hiring plan gets simpler. Each new role should link to one of the customer segments or one of the decisions you wrote down. If it doesn’t, it can wait for the next round of planning.