How to Stop a Bozo Explosion

What's the biggest challenge a company faces as it scales?

Running out of cash?

Getting crushed by a competitor?

Finding out your strategy was flawed?

Those are all dangers, but there's something much more common, more insidious, less recognizable:

The Bozo Explosion.

Steve Jobs coined this term to describe how talent degrades as a company grows. Typically, a successful startup is full of highly intelligent, highly driven A-players. But then those A-players need to start hiring a lot of people.

A-players tend to hire other A-players, but with hiring happening fast, a few B-players slip in. And those B-players are more prone to hiring fellow B-players and C-players.

Soon you've got a cascading decline in talent—i.e., bozos around every corner of your company.