I appreciate your honesty and awareness, as well as waking up the reality of tech start-ups and fast growing companies.

I specialize in working with growth stage companies so I have wateched the many changes and transformations a company and culture go through as it scales. Unfortunately company growth is a double edge sword as you mentioned.

I can tell you from experience when a successful company is run by 30 and 20 year olds — who are often brilliant, idealistic and ambitious — a good thing, I hate to say it. Such individuals are not usually “mature’ enough to balance the rapid success and aggressive ambition with the mission, values and integrity of the company. Yes, even with investors wanting their ROI quickly.

From your article, I think of Stephen Covey’s quote … “It’s one thing to move up the ladder. It’s a whole other thing to find out your ladder is against the wrong wall.”

As people get older, they start waking up to their ladder being against the wrong wall. As painful of a wakeup call as it may seem, be grateful you learned this early on, as many never wake up from being comatose to learning that lesson before they die.

Good luck in following your soul.