Jeff Zhifan Chen

GROWTH FOUNDERS: HIRE A NEAR-PEER A portfolio founder approaching $100M in ARR asked me about the single biggest and most impactful hire they can make. I thought for a bit tand said: "Hire a near-peer". In every generational company I've been part of, the founders hired a near-peer, who was essential to the company's success. - Google: Larry and Sergey hired @ericschmidt . - Facebook: Mark hired @sherylsandberg . - Square: Jack hired @rabois . - DoorDash: Tony hired @chrispa - Coinbase: Brian hired @emiliemc Characteristics of a near-peer: 1. They're so good that the founder will be fine reporting to them if the roles were reversed. (Mark has said publicly that he'd be fine reporting to Sheryl) 2. Their strengths perfectly complement the founder's strengths; however, they share many cultural attributes with the founder and pass the founder's airport test, since the founder will be spending a ton of time with them (example: Eric being a Computer Scientist, which was culturally very important at Google back in the day) 3. They're systems builders who have already operated at the scale you're growing into. Pattern recognition on $100M to $1B is not something you build in real-time. A near-peer lets the founder focus on what only the founder can do (product, vision, culture). The near-peer handles everything else. Also, near-peers stay for the long haul. Decade-plus tenure is standard. The reason this hire matters more than any other: after $50M ARR, the bottleneck shifts from product-market fit to organizational scale. The founder is still the visionary. But the company needs someone who has already scaled a company of that size. Most founders wait too long. They hire functional VPs first (Sales, Marketing, Engineering, Finance) and hope the collective covers the gap. It rarely does. A stack of VPs reporting into a founder who has never scaled a company creates coordination overhead, and the founder becomes the bottleneck. The near-peer absorbs that overhead. They turn the founder's vision into daily operating decisions. They give the VPs a leader who has actually run a company this size. Growth founders: if you're between $50M and $300M in ARR and every week feels like a coordination tax, the near-peer is the hire that determines whether you build a $10-100B company or top out at $1B. Start the search now, ideally through warm intros from your venture/angel investors and advisors.