Book · How companies get built
High Growth Handbook
Elad Gil · 2018
A reference manual for the stage after product-market fit — hiring executives, managing boards, and the organisational problems that stall companies at Series A and B.
Why it is here
This is a practical handbook rather than a narrative, organised around the specific problems of scaling from tens to hundreds of people: when to hire executives, how to structure a board, when to fire someone, how to handle acquisitions.
The angel-relevant content is the board and executive material. Most seed companies that fail to become Series A companies do so because they could not make the organisational transition, not because the product was wrong, and this describes that transition in more operational detail than anything else on the list.
It also includes interviews with people who ran these functions at well-known companies, which makes it usable as a reference rather than requiring a linear read.
Read it if
You follow companies past seed and want to understand what happens next inside them.
Skip it if
You only invest at pre-seed and never follow on — the problems described are two rounds away.
What it explains