You probably started your company because you were good at something. Building products. Solving technical problems. Seeing market opportunities. Something concrete and measurable.
Then you hired people. And everything changed.
The Shift Nobody Warns You About
In the early days, your job is to do the work. Build the product. Close the deals. Serve the customers. Whatever the core function is, you do it.
Then you grow. And suddenly your job isn't doing the work — it's making sure other people do the work. Your skills shift from execution to management. From building to leading.
Most founders weren't trained for this. They didn't sign up for it. And it shows.
What "People Problems" Actually Look Like
When founders say they have "people problems," here's what they usually mean:
Hiring that doesn't work. You bring someone on, they seem great, and three months later you're wondering what went wrong. The person you interviewed isn't the person who showed up.
Performance conversations you avoid. Someone isn't meeting expectations, but the conversation feels too uncomfortable. So you drop hints. Give feedback in passing. Hope they figure it out. They don't.
Top performers who leave. Your best people get frustrated and go somewhere else. Often because they're not challenged, not recognized, or carrying too much weight for people who don't pull their own.
Conflict that festers. Tensions between team members that everyone can feel but nobody addresses. It affects everything, but it's easier to ignore.
Culture that happens by accident. You didn't explicitly build a culture, so one formed anyway. And it might not be the culture you want.
Why This Is So Hard
People problems are hard because they're messy. There's no right answer. No clear metric. No technical solution.
A coding bug has a fix. A market problem has a strategy. A people problem has... nuance. Context. Emotion. History.
And the stakes are high. Get it wrong, and people are affected. Relationships are damaged. Trust is broken.
So most founders avoid. They stick to what they're good at. They tell themselves they don't have time for this soft stuff. And the problems compound.
What Actually Helps
Accept that this is your job now. Leadership isn't something you do alongside building the company. It is building the company. The sooner you accept this, the better.
Get specific about expectations. Most performance problems are clarity problems. What exactly do you expect? What does success look like? If you can't articulate it clearly, how can anyone deliver it?
Have the hard conversations early. The conversation you're avoiding doesn't get easier with time. It gets harder. The kindest thing you can do is be direct, early.
Build feedback into the system. Don't save feedback for annual reviews. Make it constant, normal, expected. "Here's what's working. Here's what could be better." No drama, just information.
Recognize that you're not for everyone. Some people won't fit your culture. Some won't want to work the way you work. That's okay. The goal isn't to keep everyone — it's to keep the right people.
Get help. You don't have to figure this out alone. Coaches, mentors, peers who've been through it. The people stuff has been solved before. You don't have to reinvent it.
The Bottom Line
The technical problems of your business are the easy part. The people problems are where it actually gets difficult.
You can avoid this reality. You can stick to the spreadsheets and the product roadmaps. But your company's success — or failure — will be determined by how you handle the human stuff.
The founders who build lasting companies aren't the ones with the best products. They're the ones who figure out how to lead people.
That's the real work.