Top 5 Mistakes Founders Make Trying to Scale Insights and Data Businesses

Over my 20+ years scaling consumer insights and data businesses, I’ve watched companies face similar challenges as they reach new revenue milestones. Some break through and build repeatable, profitable growth, while others get stuck and lose momentum. The good news? These mistakes can be avoided with the right focus and strategy.

Here are the top 5 mistakes I see Founders make that prevent their businesses from scaling effectively.

Mistake #1: Being Too Opportunistic & Reactive

As businesses grow, the agility and flexibility that once powered their early growth can become liabilities. Continuing to chase every potential opportunity, making seat-of-the-pants decisions based on short-term wins, and over-applying agile principles from technology development to how they run the business scatter resources and prevent the company from focusing on what will drive long-term, repeatable growth.

What does this typically look like?

• The product roadmap is stretched thin, catering to too many different client demands.
• Operations are chaotic, often compensating for half-baked product functionality and reactive decision-making.
• The GTM strategy is unfocused, leading to fewer qualified leads and inconsistent quota achievement.
• Margins remain constant because the company can’t support revenue growth without adding more bodies.
• Goals and priorities shift too frequently, often under the guise of agility, meaning that strategic initiatives get sidelined due to a relentless focus on short-term priorities.

Scale requires shifting from opportunistic growth to strategic, focused growth. Whereas the company was once scrappy and expansive, it now needs to reduce and simplify across all parts of the business. This means being laser-focused on the ideal customer profiles (ICP) that will drive revenue, aligning product, operations, and GTM strategy for long-term success, and maintaining clear, consistent goals that support the bigger picture. Leadership must find a balance between remaining adaptable and maintaining focus on long-term growth.

Mistake #2: Leadership/Founder Bottlenecks

In the early stages, founders drive every major decision and manage key client relationships. However, as the company grows, this dependence on leadership creates bottlenecks, limiting the team’s ability to operate independently and scale effectively.

What does this typically look like?

• The founder or leadership team is still involved in every operational decision, sometimes even in daily tasks.
• The company lacks a competent middle management team to take on key responsibilities.
• Slow hiring creates drag that hinders growth.
• The founding team may lack the experience needed to organize and run the company for repeatable, scalable growth.

To overcome this, founders must stop working IN the business and start working ON it, transitioning from hands-on operators to strategic leaders who create the conditions for efficient, team-based growth.

Mistake #3: Inefficient Processes and Lack of Systems

As businesses grow, one of the most commonly exposed weaknesses is the reliance on highly individualized, manual processes. Without consistent processes, companies will struggle to deliver efficiently and scale effectively.

What does this typically look like?

• Production processes are highly idiosyncratic and inconsistent.
• Success often depends on a few people who know how to exploit the quirks of the tools and make them compensate for insufficient product functionality or lack of integration.
• Sales teams are bogged down in operations, preventing them from performing either function effectively.
• Margin improvement becomes an intractable issue. The answer to every challenge is “We need more people!” yet there is no visibility into why additional resources are needed, or more importantly, whether the work can be done more efficiently.
• Teams are overworked for all of the above reasons, and because legitimate hiring isn’t prioritized!

To overcome this, companies must establish clear, scalable processes with defined roles and responsibilities. Automation and consistency become essential to delivering at scale, reducing inefficiencies, and freeing up teams to focus on their core responsibilities. Leadership must drive the shift to a new operating model, even if it means bringing in outside expertise to compensate for the team’s lack of experience in this area.

Mistake #4: Failing to Manage Complexity as the Business Grows

As a business scales, complexity multiplies. Whereas early on a founder or small leadership team could oversee most activities, this quickly breaks down as the company grows. This is yet another area where leaders need to focus on managing the business rather than getting stuck in operational details.

What does this typically look like?

• Each team sets its own priorities and goals, leading to a lack of coordination.
• Communication breaks down across teams, causing delays and inefficiencies.
• Culture begins to drift, as new hires don’t fully understand or align with the company’s original values, causing fragmentation and disengagement.
• The company loses agility, leading to missed opportunities, slower execution, and rising frustration across departments.

To overcome this, leaders must focus on building the structures and communication processes that keep the entire company aligned. This means setting clear priorities, improving cross-functional collaboration, and ensuring that all teams are working toward a common goal. Leaders should also maintain a cohesive company culture, ensuring that new hires understand and embody the company’s values.

Mistake #5: Overextending to Land Big Logos

As companies chase enterprise clients, they often stretch beyond their capabilities. While these clients bring prestige and revenue (and investor approval), they also invariably demand heavy customization, long sales cycles, and high-touch service, which can strain teams, systems, and finances if the business isn’t ready.

What does this typically look like?

• Sales teams invest months trying to land enterprise clients, with no guarantee of success.
• Operations struggles to meet the custom needs of these clients, increasing complexity and risk.
• Standardized service models give way to bespoke delivery, which eats into margins and creates inefficiencies.
• Cash flow suffers due to the long payment cycles typical of enterprise deals.

To overcome this, companies need to ensure they have the right infrastructure—both in product and service—to land the whales profitably without compromising their ability to efficiently bring in the smaller fish.

Conclusion

Scaling a business requires a shift in how people operate, make decisions, and lead. If your business is struggling to break through the next revenue milestone or you’re facing any of these challenges, let’s talk.?

Schedule your free discovery call or message me on LinkedIn. Let's identify the specific barriers holding back your business and how you can begin to overcome them.