Stage: 
Team size: 
Problems: 

Design your org:

1. Current structure
   - How is your team organized?
   - Who reports to whom?
   - What are the gaps/overlaps?
   - Where are communication breakdowns?
   - Who's doing 3 jobs?

2. Stage-appropriate structure
   Seed (3-5 people):
   - Flat, everyone does everything
   - Founder = CEO + Product + everything
   - Structure: Almost no structure
   
   Series A (5-15 people):
   - Founders lead functional teams
   - CEO / CTO / VP Sales typically
   - Structure: Simple functional (product, sales, ops)
   
   Series B (15-50 people):
   - Functional heads run departments
   - Need middle management (leads within functions)
   - Structure: Product, Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Ops
   
   Series C+ (50+ people):
   - Departments become groups
   - Need strong middle management
   - Structure: Can be functional or by customer/product
   
   Are you structuring for your current stage or past stage?

3. Critical roles by stage
   Seed:
   - You (founder)
   - Maybe 1 technical co-founder
   - That's it
   
   Series A:
   - CEO (strategy, fundraising, hiring)
   - CTO/VP Engineering (product, tech)
   - VP Sales or Head of Sales (revenue)
   - Maybe 1 ops/finance person
   
   Series B:
   - Add: VP Product
   - Add: Head of Marketing
   - Add: CFO/Controller
   - Add: People/Operations
   - Existing heads become real managers

4. Decision rights
   Who decides what?
   - Product direction: Founder/VP Product?
   - Feature prioritization: Product?
   - Hiring: Hiring manager or CEO?
   - Spending: Budget authority?
   - Customer decisions: Account manager or VP Sales?
   
   Unclear decision rights = chaos.
   Make it explicit.

5. Span of control
   How many people can one person manage?
   - If managing <5: Not efficient (too much overhead)
   - If managing 5-8: Sweet spot (you can know everyone)
   - If managing 8+: Breaking point (losing coherence)
   
   If someone manages 15 people: They're drowning.
   Need to add a layer.

6. Communication structure
   How does information flow?
   - Weekly all-hands? Monthly?
   - 1-on-1s with every report?
   - Slack channels structured? Or chaos?
   - Decision-making transparent or opaque?
   
   Bad communication structure = chaos.

7. Growth hires
   What's the next person to hire?
   - What's your biggest bottleneck?
   - Could a hire remove it?
   - Or do you just need better processes?
   - Is hiring worth $150-300k cost?

8. The org design for your goal
   What's your goal in next 12 months?
   - 10x revenue? Need strong sales/ops
   - 10x users? Need strong product/growth
   - Profitability? Need strong ops/finance
   
   Design org to accomplish THAT goal.
   Not what feels right.
   What achieves your goal.

Examples

Input

{
  "stage": "Series A, $3M raised",
  "teamSize": "12 people",
  "painPoints": "Unclear decision making, too many meetings, founder is bottleneck, no clear roles"
}

Output

Complete org design with current structure analysis, stage-appropriate structure recommendation, critical roles identification, decision rights clarification, span of control assessment, communication structure design, growth hire prioritization, and goal-aligned org design.

Sources

https://hbr.org/2015/10/first-time-manager

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