TL;DR
Small problems rarely stay small inside a growing startup. The issue is not that founders miss problems. It is that they often tolerate them long enough for them to become part of the company's normal way of working.
It usually starts with something small
A customer keeps getting confused during onboarding.
A team member keeps missing deadlines.
Sales keeps promising things product cannot deliver.
A report takes three hours every week.
None of these problems feels urgent.
So the founder says:
"We'll fix it later."
That sentence can become expensive.
Startups normalize problems surprisingly fast
People are adaptable.
If something happens often enough, the team learns to work around it.
A manual process becomes "just how we do things."
A confusing product flow becomes a support team's responsibility.
A communication gap becomes another meeting.
An unreliable process becomes someone's unofficial job.
The problem does not disappear.
The organization simply learns to live with it.
The real cost is bigger than the original problem
Suppose your sales team spends an extra 30 minutes every day dealing with a broken process.
That sounds manageable.
But multiply it across five people.
Then multiply it across a year.
Now consider the customer frustration, missed opportunities, and management time involved.
The original problem was small.
The accumulated cost is not.
Founders often wait for problems to become urgent
This is understandable.
There are always bigger fires.
A major customer issue feels more important than fixing an inefficient internal process.
A fundraising deadline feels more important than improving a slow workflow.
A product launch feels more important than cleaning up an outdated system.
But if every problem waits until it becomes urgent, the company eventually operates in permanent crisis mode.
Ask a different question
Instead of asking:
"Is this problem serious enough to fix?"
Ask:
"What happens if we leave this alone for another year?"
That question changes the conversation.
A minor inconvenience may remain minor.
But it may also spread into hiring, customer experience, operations, and culture.
You need to know which one you're dealing with.
Watch for recurring workarounds
One of the clearest warning signs is when people repeatedly create workarounds.
If employees keep maintaining spreadsheets outside your main system, ask why.
If customers keep contacting support to complete something that should be self-service, investigate.
If managers keep holding meetings to clarify the same issue, find the source.
Workarounds are useful clues.
They show you where the business is compensating for a weakness.
Not every problem deserves a solution
This does not mean founders should fix everything.
That creates another problem.
The goal is not perfection.
The goal is to identify problems that are becoming expensive through repetition.
A useful filter is:
- Does this happen frequently?
- Does it affect customers?
- Does it consume significant team time?
- Will it become harder to fix as we grow?
- Are people already creating workarounds?
If several answers are yes, it probably deserves attention.
Strong companies remove friction early
Good leadership is not only about solving major problems.
It is also about preventing small problems from becoming permanent.
Sometimes the best decision a founder can make is surprisingly boring:
Fix the process.
Remove the unnecessary step.
Clarify the responsibility.
Improve the onboarding.
Delete the meeting.
Document the decision.
These actions rarely make headlines.
But they make companies easier to run.
A question for founders
Think about the last time someone on your team said:
"That's just how we do it."
Now ask yourself:
"Why?"
You may discover a process that made sense two years ago but no longer fits the company you are building today.
Final thought
Startups change quickly.
Processes do not always change with them.
That gap creates friction.
The healthiest companies do not wait for every problem to become painful before acting.
They notice patterns early.
They question old habits.
And they fix the problems that quietly consume time, money, and attention.
Sometimes the biggest improvement in a startup is not a new initiative.
It is finally fixing something everyone had learned to tolerate.
