Once you are able to achieve some real traction with your technical startup (paying customers, revenue stream), it may seem the time to relax a bit, but in fact this is the point where many founders start to flounder. All the skills and instincts you needed to get to this level can actually start working against you and you can fail to scale.

Investors often say that successfully navigating the early stages of a startup requires lots of street smart, guts, and luck. To successfully scale the business, there has to be a transition to executive mode in the more traditional business sense, where relationships are even more critical. Certain behaviors between these two modes are incompatible and can cause real problems.

Several years ago, John Hamm, who has a diverse background as a technology CEO, a venture investor, and a leadership coach/advisor, published some work on this subject in Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale (http://entropyventures...