Series B Team Scaling: From 30 to 150 Employees Without Losing Culture

Series B is the most dangerous growth phase for startup culture. You are about to five-fold your headcount in 18-24 months. The intimate startup where everyone knew each other's names and could fit in one room is about to become something fundamentally different. The question is whether you manage that transition intentionally or let it happen to you.

Most startups lose what made them special during this phase. The scrappy, move-fast culture calcifies into process. The flat org chart acquires layers. The people who joined for the startup experience start looking at bigger companies where the path is clearer. It does not have to be this way, but avoiding it requires deliberate effort.

The Three Phases of Series B Scaling

Phase 1: Building the Leadership Layer (Months 1-6)

Before you can scale the team, you need people who can manage the scaling. This means hiring your first round of department leaders: VP of Engineering, VP of Product, Head of Sales, Head of People. These are the people who will own hiring plans, set team culture, and make hundreds of daily decisions that shape your company.

The biggest mistake here is hiring leaders who are too senior. You need people who have managed teams of 20-50, not 200-500. Someone who ran engineering at a 5,000-person company will struggle with the ambiguity and scrappiness of a 30-person startup. They will want to implement processes and structures that make sense at scale but create overhead at your current size.

Look for leaders who have been through one previous scaling journey, ideally from 20-100 people. They have seen what works and what does not, but they are still comfortable rolling up their sleeves.

Phase 2: Scaling Individual Teams (Months 6-15)

Once your leaders are in place and have established their strategies, you enter the high-growth hiring phase. This is where you go from 30 to 80 people. Every team is hiring simultaneously. You are interviewing constantly. The recruiting pipeline needs to be a well-oiled machine.

The critical risk in this phase is diluting culture through speed. When you need to fill 50 roles in 12 months, the temptation to lower the bar is immense. Resist it. Every hire that falls below your standard makes the next hire harder because great people do not want to work with mediocre people.

Phase 3: Building Infrastructure (Months 12-24)

As you approach 100-150 people, you need organizational infrastructure that did not exist before. Performance review systems, career ladders, compensation bands, onboarding programs, internal communications strategies, and management training. This is when you need a strong Head of People or VP of HR who can build these systems.

Preserving Culture During Hyper-Growth

Document What Matters

Before you start scaling, write down what makes your culture special. Not corporate values that could apply to any company. Specific behaviors and principles that are uniquely yours. If your culture values direct feedback, document what that looks like in practice. If speed matters, define what speed means and what tradeoffs you are willing to make.

This documentation becomes the North Star for every hiring decision, every performance review, and every cultural conflict during the scaling process.

Hire Culture Carriers

Every new hire either strengthens or dilutes your culture. During high-growth phases, prioritize candidates who will actively carry your culture forward, not just tolerate it. This does not mean hiring people who are all the same. It means hiring people who share your core values while bringing diverse perspectives and backgrounds.

Protect the Rituals

Every startup has rituals that create belonging: weekly demos, team lunches, Slack traditions, all-hands meetings. As you scale, these rituals need to evolve but not disappear. The weekly all-hands that worked at 20 people might need to become a monthly all-hands with weekly team standups at 100. The key is maintaining the spirit while adapting the format.

The Bottom Line

Scaling from 30 to 150 is the hardest organizational challenge most founders will face. The companies that do it well are deliberate about their leadership hires, rigorous about maintaining their hiring bar, and intentional about preserving what makes their culture special. It requires more effort than letting growth happen organically, but the result is a company that scales without losing its soul.