TL;DR

• Conventional advice to “step back” during growth can miss the benefits of founder involvement in daily operations.
• Staying close to the work ensures tighter feedback loops, early problem detection, and faster, better decision-making.
• Operational awareness comes from direct exposure to customers, frontline teams, and processes—not just filtered reports.
• Founders shape company culture by example; stepping back too soon risks dilution of core values.
• Involvement provides critical context for strategic choices, enabling speed without sacrificing quality.
• Hands-on founders see higher retention, stronger alignment, and a reduced risk of drift from the original mission.
• Effective leaders avoid micromanaging by “leading with context, not control,” keeping teams empowered yet aligned.

When companies begin to grow, founders often hear the same advice: delegate more, remove yourself from operations, and focus on high-level strategy. While some of that guidance holds merit, it’s also incomplete. Staying close to the work, especially during moments of scale, can be the difference between building a good company and building one that endures.

David Colakovic, a founder and operator with deep experience in product development and growth strategy, understands this well. His career reflects a pattern seen across successful startups. Consistent founder involvement in core operations leads to tighter feedback loops and better decisions. As Colakovic puts it, “Growth looks great from the outside, but only the people closest to the work know where it’s brittle.”

Too often, stepping back is treated as a badge of maturity. But founders who remain present during critical phases are better equipped to make sharper decisions, spot issues early, and prevent the kind of drift that can quietly derail a business. While staying involved doesn’t require managing every detail, it does require staying connected to what matters most. After all, founders who stay engaged during periods of growth tend to build companies that move faster, hire better, and stay grounded in their mission.

Operations: You Can’t Fix What You Don’t See

Founders who stay close to the actual work are usually the first to notice when something isn’t functioning as it should. When they engage directly with customers, frontline teams, and internal processes, they gain insights that filtered reports often miss. For example, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, famously kept an “empty chair” in meetings to represent the customer and personally reviewed early customer feedback, providing unfiltered insight that filtered reports often miss.

When founders rely solely on summaries or dashboards, important context gets lost. Not because people are withholding information, but because every layer of interpretation adds distance. Consequently, that distance makes it harder to understand why something isn’t working or how to fix it.

Let’s say a product team is rolling out a feature that looks great in testing but falls flat once it goes live. If the founder has been listening to support calls or sitting in on user research, they’re more likely to catch the disconnect early. But, without that direct exposure, a team might spend weeks optimizing the wrong thing.

David Colakovic, founder of Eco-Power Group, illustrates this principle by staying closely involved with planning and operations across the company’s recycling, fuel production, and construction businesses. His close involvement in key operational areas—spanning everything from bio-drying tunnels to infrared sorting systems—helps ensure issues are caught early and efficiency remains high. This kind of involvement doesn’t require being everywhere. But it does mean showing up selectively, listening carefully, and staying informed enough to ask the right questions. That’s how operational awareness becomes operational clarity.

Culture Isn’t What You Say, It’s What You Do

A company’s culture isn’t defined by a mission statement or a set of values written on the wall. It’s shaped by how people act, how decisions are made, and what behaviors are consistently reinforced. Founders play a key role in setting that tone, whether they realize it or not.

Rapid growth makes this harder. When a company doubles in headcount, it also multiplies the number of habits, assumptions, and expectations in play. If the founder steps back too soon, culture becomes a collection of individual team norms rather than a shared foundation. It doesn’t always break immediately, but it does start to blur.

That erosion has real business consequences. According to data compiled by Arbinger Institute, companies with strong corporate cultures experience revenue growth that is four times higher than those with weak cultures. You should consider culture not as a soft variable but as a key predictor of performance, especially during scaling phases.

The founders at Airbnb knew this. In the company’s early years, they personally reviewed every new hire because they felt that it was important to protect the values they believed would matter at scale. Their presence in that process sent a clear message to the rest of the company: who we bring in shapes what we become.

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings put it simply: “The culture is what you tolerate.” If no one’s paying attention, culture gets built by accident. Founders who stay involved are making sure that what made the company work early on doesn’t get lost in the rush to grow.

Decision-Making: Involvement Enables Speed and Context

“A founder who understands what’s happening on the ground can make better decisions, says David Colakovik. “They can also make them faster. And this kind of decisiveness becomes a real advantage when markets move quickly, customers churn fast, or timing is critical.”

Context is key here. It’s not enough to know that sales are down or that a product isn’t performing. Founders who are close to the inputs like customer calls, team conversations, feedback from the field understand why something is off. Without that insight, it’s easy to solve the wrong problem or delay important changes.

Also keep in mind that speed and quality aren’t trade-offs. In fact, McKinsey research shows that organizations that make decisions quickly are twice as likely to make high-quality decisions compared to slower decision-makers. When founders stay involved, they’re more likely to recognize patterns early and respond with clarity.

Staying close also helps maintain strategic alignment. As a company grows, teams face pressure to hit short-term goals. A founder’s presence can act as a filter, helping prioritize the right bets and keep the company focused on what matters in the long run.

Some worry that this slows down execution. In practice, the opposite tends to be true. A founder who sees the issue clearly can make a quick, confident call. When that happens, the team doesn’t hesitate. They move.

You Don’t Need to Micromanage, But You Can’t Disappear

There’s a balance to strike. Founders don’t need to weigh in on every decision. But they also can’t assume everything will run fine without their input. The risk isn’t just operational. It’s strategic. Too much distance, and the company starts drifting from its original direction.

Adding a bit of structure can make all the difference. A Harvard Business School survey found that startups with hands-on founders—those who provided weekly feedback, set shared milestones, and tracked progress—saw 19.6 percent fewer employee departures and were 20 percent less likely to fail within eight months compared to less involved counterparts. That’s a meaningful impact on retention and viability.

As Netflix’s Hastings once put it, “Lead with context, not control.” In other words, the goal isn’t to micromanage. Rather, it’s to provide clarity so that others can make better decisions. Founders who do this well create an environment where teams stay aligned without being overly dependent.

The most effective founders build routines that keep them connected. They hold regular check-ins, listen to what frontline teams are seeing, and spend time with customers. Melanie Perkins at Canva, for example, has talked about staying deeply involved in product and user experience, even as the company scaled globally. She stays close not to maintain power, but to ensure the company’s decisions still reflect its original mission and customer needs.

The Presence That Matters

A founder’s presence sets the pace. The questions they ask, the time they spend, and the actions they take signal what the company values and where it’s headed.

“Pulling back entirely can send the wrong message,” warns Colakovik. “It can suggest that the hard part is over or that the details no longer matter. But the most sustainable companies are often led by people who choose to stay close, even when they could walk away. Not because they need to, but because they care enough to keep showing up.”

FAQ

Why should founders stay involved in day-to-day operations?

Staying involved allows founders to detect issues early, maintain cultural alignment, and make faster, more informed decisions.

Does being hands-on mean micromanaging?

No. Effective founders guide with context and clarity, not control—empowering teams while staying connected to core priorities.

How does founder involvement affect company culture?

Founders set the tone through their actions. Remaining engaged reinforces values and prevents cultural drift during rapid growth.

Can staying close improve decision-making?

Yes—direct exposure to inputs like customer feedback and team insights ensures better problem diagnosis and quicker, high-quality calls.

What risks come from stepping back too early?

Premature distance can lead to strategic drift, weakened culture, missed operational issues, and slower reaction to market changes.

Is there data supporting hands-on leadership?

Yes—Harvard Business School found that startups with hands-on founders had nearly 20% fewer employee departures and were 20% less likely to fail within eight months.