When the founder outgrows the structure: what an interim manager can do for a start-up or scale-up
by Nicolas Henckes, Founder & CEO
Picture a young founder, a brilliant engineer with a sharp business idea. She builds the MVP largely on her own, wins the first customers and attracts the attention of investors. Then the financing arrives, and with it a very different company.
The team grows from five to twenty-five. Investors expect monthly reporting. Customers want contracts, security assurances and service levels. Recruitment, payroll and budget follow-up pile up. The skills that built the product are not the ones needed to run the organization, and the founder feels it before anyone says it.
This is not a failure. It is a predictable stage of growth, and it is where an interim manager can be most useful.
The problem is rarely talent. It is the shift in role.
In the early days, a founder decides fast, codes at night and knows every detail. After the funding round, the job changes. The founder must delegate, set priorities, run a leadership team, communicate with the board and build a culture, often without having been trained or coached for it.
At the same time, the company’s structure lags behind its ambitions. Reporting relies on spreadsheets built in a hurry. Responsibilities are blurred. Processes exist in people’s heads. Nobody decided this on purpose, it simply accumulated.
First use: supporting the founder’s leadership development
An interim manager is an experienced executive who steps in for a defined period and with a clear mandate. In this first scenario, the role is closer to that of a sparring partner who also takes responsibility for operations.
Concretely, the interim manager can:
take over the management tasks the founder is not yet ready to carry, and show how they are done
help build and coach a first leadership team
teach by example how to delegate, hold a decision meeting, give feedback and handle a conflict
gradually hand responsibilities back as the founder gains confidence
The goal is not to replace the founder but to shorten the learning curve. What would take two or three painful years of trial and error can be compressed into a few months, with someone who has already seen the pattern several times.
Second use: structuring the company for scale
In the second scenario, the priority is the organization itself. The interim manager acts as a builder of foundations:
a reporting cycle that gives investors and management reliable numbers
clear roles, decision rights and governance, including a functioning board
core finance, HR and legal processes that hold up as headcount grows
a realistic plan for the permanent hires the company will need
Why not simply recruit a permanent COO or CFO? Often because the company does not yet know exactly what it needs. Hiring too early, or the wrong profile, is expensive for a young company. An interim manager can design the role, put the structure in place and then help recruit and onboard the permanent successor. The handover is then clean, with a defined scope and a prepared successor.
Other situations where an interim manager makes sense
The same logic applies elsewhere:
Bridging a gap, when a key executive leaves suddenly or a hire fails
Preparing a transition, such as investor readiness, a due diligence process or the creation of a first foreign subsidiary
Resetting after a stall, when fast growth has left the company in a state that needs a rapid diagnosis and a stabilizing hand
What makes the difference
A few conditions make these missions work. The mandate must be explicit, with objectives, duration and decision rights agreed in advance. The founder must want the support, because an interim manager imposed on a reluctant founder rarely succeeds. And the mission must have an end, with a handover planned from day one.
Growth exposes the limits of what worked at the beginning. Recognizing this early is a sign of lucidity, not weakness, and the founders who do so tend to scale with fewer scars.
Are you facing this stage of growth? We would be glad to discuss it.
