Effective Communication in Fast-paced Startups

Recently, I've been reflecting on what makes startups succeed or fail. After speaking with dozens of founders each week, I've noticed something interesting: most startup failures have nothing to do with cash flow. They fail because of communication. The startups that don't make it all have one thing in common: their internal teams don't know how to communicate effectively. That's why clarity is an explicit priority at Abacum. I'll be the first to admit that clarity is a difficult concept to define and an even harder one to achieve. This is especially true in our environment, where things move at lightning speed. When I'm short on time, there's a real pull to fire off a quick Slack message and hope they'll figure out what I mean. But this is a dangerous trap I've learned to avoid. If you want someone to do X but they think you want them to do Y, you're both going to end up frustrated. They've wasted their time, and the work still isn't done. It's a lose-lose. That's why eliminating these mismatched expectations is a top priority for our team. And it all starts by asking, "Does this make sense?" This simple question is the first step in intentional communication. While it might seem like you're saving time by not overexplaining, the cost of miscommunication is much greater. Beyond simple efficiency gains, this approach is fundamental to our company culture. We believe we all owe it to one another to provide the context necessary for success. Instead of ending a conversation assuming our message was conveyed clearly, we encourage everyone on our team to confirm that it was. This doesn't have to be complicated. Simply asking "Does that make sense?" or "Do you understand what I mean?" is enough. When the answer is yes, great. Then you know you were actually communicating clearly. But when the answer is no, it opens up an opportunity for clarification. You now have the chance to ensure the other person walks away with the context and priority you intended. At the end of the day, if you really want alignment, you have to be okay with slowing down. But I promise it's worth it.

Everyone has their role. But they have to stay in sync. Communication is the difference between cross-functional alignment and costly confusion. Finance, Ops, and RevOps all care about performance, but they often define and track it differently. And if your team spends more time interpreting each other than acting, growth stalls fast and value-creation is impossible. So what does effective communication actually look like in a scaling agency? 1. Create shared language around core concepts How: Agree on standard definitions for key metrics like “forecast,” “margin,” “utilization,” and even “booked vs. billable.” Put these into a shared knowledge base or glossary and refer back regularly in dashboards, meetings, and reporting. Example: You say “utilization is low.” Ops hears “we need to fire someone.” Finance hears “margins are tanking.” Instead, everyone agrees: utilization = total billable hours ÷ total available hours. Now you’re debating numbers, not definitions. 2. Use asynchronous updates for tactical reporting How: Move recurring tactical updates (like forecast roll-ups, budget tracking, pipeline status) into asynchronous formats like Loom videos, Slack threads, or shared dashboards so meetings are reserved for strategy and decisions, not reporting. Example: Instead of spending 30 minutes reviewing pipeline and delivery metrics in your weekly sync, each function posts a Loom walk-through in a shared channel every Monday. Your Tuesday meeting now focuses on what the data means and what to do about it. 3. Make project and pipeline transparency a default, not a request How: Give all three teams access to real-time delivery and pipeline data via shared tools (e.g., HubSpot, ClickUp, Float, Mosaic). Remove permission bottlenecks. Build dashboards that auto-pull from shared sources. Example: RevOps updates a proposal scope. Ops sees it immediately in ClickUp. Finance sees the expected hours in their margin model. No email. No Slack ping. No lag. Everyone acts faster because they’re already in the loop. Great collaboration doesn’t require more meetings. It requires better visibility and shared understanding. Get your communication architecture right, and everything else - forecasting, hiring, pricing, client delivery - gets easier. Clarity Scales. Misalignment Costs.

At Mesmer, we do a full-team check in twice a day. Most founders think that's overkill. Here's why it's actually essential: Early-stage startups change direction constantly. Between our morning and evening check-ins, we usually have 15 minutes of updates to share. Customer call reveals a new problem. Engineer discovers a technical challenge. Someone has an idea that changes everything. In just 4 hours, the entire direction of what we're building that day can shift. Pre-PMF, you're in intense discovery mode. If you're not changing direction every few days, you're probably not learning fast enough. -- Post-PMF, it's different. You go from discovery to execution. Longer cycles make sense because you're scaling what works, not finding what works. But right now - we set goals in slices of hours, not weeks. Real example from yesterday: We had a customer call at 2pm that revealed a missing feature. By 4pm we had built and shipped it. By 6pm we were demoing it to another prospect. That only works with constant communication. In the early stages, you need to talk as often as your product changes. That should be constantly.

As startups scale from 5 to 15 to 50+ full-time employees, the challenge of maintaining cohesion across functions gets real — fast. I recently sat down with the CTO co-founder of one of my portfolio companies whose product & engineering team has scaled quickly post-Series A. We discussed how easy it is to unintentionally silo teams as headcount grows — especially in high-growth environments where speed often trumps structure. Reflecting on my own experience building teams and seeing some of the best in action, one of the best decisions we made was requiring monthly divisional meetings led by team leads. These sessions became a forcing function for: – reporting individual and team OKR progress – surfacing hard truths and learnings – and most importantly, celebrating wins and growth opportunities. When done right, these touchpoints don't just track performance — they build culture. Here are some principles I’ve seen help early teams scale without losing their connective tissue: 🧭 Clarity around OKRs = Clarity around purpose. Every division should understand not only their goals but how those goals map back to the company’s north star. 🧠 Foster a culture of intellectual honesty. High-performing teams aren’t afraid to talk about what didn’t work — that’s where the best insight lives. 🤝 Rituals matter. Regular, predictable cadences — even 30 mins bi-weekly or monthly — build shared accountability, invite transparency, and encourage knowledge exchange across levels. 🎉 Celebrate both outcomes and effort. Wins are obvious — but recognizing smart effort (even if it doesn’t pan out) reinforces the right behaviors and mindset. 📈 Don’t let silos creep in. As teams scale, so should your commitment to cross-functional communication and shared progress tracking. Scaling a startup is a team sport — the best ones win not just by executing fast, but by growing together. ➡️ Curious how other teams are tackling this: How do you maintain alignment and team culture as you scale headcount? Drop your approach or lessons below 👇

Slack notifications frying your brain 🫠 A meeting with sales that could have been an email 🤠 Execs hoarding information to grow political influence 😈 ••• Your startup is full of communication crimes. Sapping your energy, slowing you down. What can you do about them? I've spent the last 10+ years obsessing over good startup communication. Studying the greats, from "email transparency at Stripe" to "write like an Amazonian". Architecting at Superhuman. Advising dozens of startups. Great startups get these 15 communication principles right. 𝟭. 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 — Minimize effort for sender and recipient. 𝟮. 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 — Be concise yet clear. Maximize salience. 𝟯. 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁 — Use artifacts (Loom, etc) to boost clarity. 𝟰. 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 — Specify recipients with "@" tags. 𝟱. 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 — Don’t address unless strictly needed. 𝟲. 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 — Default to public channels. 𝟳. 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 — Look for answers before asking. 𝟴. 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗲 — Clearly respond to every point. 𝟵. 𝗖𝗹𝗼𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽 — Close out all open topics, even if to deprioritize. 𝟭𝟬. 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘀 — Agree channel norms, particularly responsiveness. 𝟭𝟭. 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹 𝗡𝘂𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 — Align sub-team norms with core. 𝟭𝟮. 𝗔𝗰𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝗹𝗲𝗱𝗴𝗲 — Rapidly signal receipt: emoji, tapback, “ack.” 𝟭𝟯. 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗶𝗴𝗻𝘁𝘆 — Recipients own alerts. Senders don’t. 𝟭𝟰. 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 — Suppress alerts. Check with intent. 𝟭𝟱. 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 — Handle all inbound messages. These principles should be of practical use to you. You could personally start using them today. Or you could institute them for your entire team. Read the full essay on my Substack: https://lnkd.in/gDq53Kyh ••• Brought to you by Wispr Flow: Effortless voice dictation. Write 4x faster in all your apps, on any device. See why I and professionals at Perplexity, Substack, and Superhuman use Wispr Flow for 70%+ of our communication. Your first month free via link in comments.

How many small but costly problems in your week could be avoided w/ slightly clearer communication? I’d bet a whole bunch 👇 Consider common workplace utterances like: - "Per our decision yesterday..." - "We talked about this..." Starting a sentence with a phrase like these reveals something about the speaker (intentionally or not). "We talked about this..." loads the conversation w/ the speaker’s own motives and emotions. It assumes shared memory and agreement. But in reality, people forget, weren’t there, or walked away w/ an entirely different interpretation. It's Rashomon Effect in action: how people witness the same event but recall it in vastly different ways. Memory isnt a transcript; it’s a reconstruction. In fast-moving teams, reconstructions can and do diverge with costly implications. The fix? Assume a little less & clarify a little more. That's it! Examples: - "Yesterday, we decided that X was better than Y because of Z. Are we all aligned, or should we do a quick recap before we dive in?" - "Following up from today’s meeting—I wanted to email you my notes. Let me know if I missed or misunderstood anything so we’re all set before next time." Most of them time you just need to add 1-2 sentences to your same email or phone call to completely avoid the most typical comms trouble in the first place 👍 #communication #founders #startups #teamwork

You can never over-communicate. This is one of my core management principles. In leading any organization, no matter the size or structure, you must actively, intentionally, and repeatedly communicate. And I am not just talking about team emails or town halls, both of which are important. I am talking about communication in all forms—formal and informal, verbal and written, broadly transmitted and delivered one-on-one. We often think we've done "a lot" of communicating. But even when we feel like we've hit every channel and made every point clear, there's always someone out there who still feels in the dark or disconnected from the mission or message. This doesn’t mean you’ve failed—it means you're human, and so are your teammates. But it also means that there is always room for more connecting. Maybe you need to enlist other messengers? Maybe you need to re-examine your message or your delivery? Most people don't just want to have an understanding of what's going on—they want to know how they fit in. This is especially true in mission-driven organizations where financial compensation takes a back seat to intrinsic rewards. People want to feel like they matter and that their work contributes to something bigger than themselves. Your team can’t connect to the mission unless you tell them exactly what that mission is. And then tell them why that mission is important. And then tell them how important their roles are in that mission. And then tell them all of that again and again. Effective communication isn’t about repetition for repetition’s sake—it’s about connection, clarity, and culture-building. When you bring people along, they are not just doing the work—they’re owning the mission. So, yes, send that extra email, give the extra update, or pop into a team member’s office one more time. Chances are, someone wants to hear more about how they can help move your mission forward. #Communication #Leadership