Done this. Good question but I don't think it's the most helpful way of thinking about it.
Every new recruit brings their own assumptions about how organizations / employment / etc. work and many of those assumptions won't be visible until after a while. This is especially true for managers.
I found Charles Handy's thinking about four types of organisational culture very helpful and I wish I'd found it earlier in the process.
AI summary: Charles Handy identified four types of organizational cultures: Power Culture, where decision-making is centralized among a few; Role Culture, which is based on defined roles and responsibilities; Task Culture, focused on teamwork to achieve specific goals; and Person Culture, where individual interests take precedence over the organization.
Basically, 15>50 is very likely to involve a shift from one of these to another one and making that open and explicit could help you a lot (including understanding how the role of senior managers needs to change).
The book is Understanding Organisations from 1976 but still valuable.
From my personal experience, if I take your categorization as a guideline, 15-50 headcount is where "Power Culture" is going be a huge issue like 80% of the time. It can very quickly devolve into brown nosing and putting off high performing new hires.
Saw this mentioned in a comment recently, I just downloaded, installed and used it to find a file while Windows Search was still saying 'Working on it...'. So I thought others might like to know.
Sometimes the BBC does make mistakes but this seems to fit their style guide:
"Treat collective nouns - companies, governments and other bodies - as singular. There are some exceptions:
...
Sports teams - although they are singular in their role as business concerns (eg: Arsenal has declared an increase in profits)
Rock/pop groups"
So treating a crew, like a team, as plural makes sense.
It might help to know that blindness takes many forms. Having no sight at all is what many people assume but is not what many blind people experience. So some blind people can use accessibility tools together with the sight they do have which may for example only be in a small part of the area most people can see, or may be blurry, or otherwise impaired.
If you're going to start something, you need to be running to it not running from something else.
Running your own thing can be great but will be hard. The culture may well not be what you hoped for, and you may well find it hard to stay motivated. The team may well feel disrespectful and demotivating. You may not even like the founder’s attitude towards you before too long.
Every new recruit brings their own assumptions about how organizations / employment / etc. work and many of those assumptions won't be visible until after a while. This is especially true for managers.
I found Charles Handy's thinking about four types of organisational culture very helpful and I wish I'd found it earlier in the process.
AI summary: Charles Handy identified four types of organizational cultures: Power Culture, where decision-making is centralized among a few; Role Culture, which is based on defined roles and responsibilities; Task Culture, focused on teamwork to achieve specific goals; and Person Culture, where individual interests take precedence over the organization.
Basically, 15>50 is very likely to involve a shift from one of these to another one and making that open and explicit could help you a lot (including understanding how the role of senior managers needs to change).
The book is Understanding Organisations from 1976 but still valuable.
Good luck!