In 2006, Wattpad started as a simple mobile reading app, mainly for classic books. Fifteen years later, it evolved into a global, AI-powered, multi-platform entertainment company with numerous blockbusters before being acquired.

As you can imagine, my role as CEO at the start of Wattpad—when it was just the co-founders and a few hundred users—was drastically different from leading a team of hundreds of employees and overseeing a platform with 100 million users.

A Typical Entrepreneur’s Evolution

In the early years, the founders focused solely on building a product and finding product-market fit, with little thought given to the business side. At this stage, the CEO is the engineer writing code, the product manager, and the product visionary, all rolled into one.

As traction builds and product-market-fit comes into sight, the CEO’s role begins to shift. Suddenly, hiring becomes a priority, and managing people and operations takes center stage. The CEO goes from being a product builder to a hiring and people manager who leads a small, close-knit team and handles the operations that come with it.

Fast forward another phase, and the company is growing even faster. Now, the CEO is no longer just a manager but the manager of managers, responsible for hiring leaders who can build and lead their own teams. Communication becomes an even more critical skill, as the CEO now leads a much larger team—many of whom don’t frequently interact with the CEO. Business models become increasingly crucial, and new tasks, like fundraising, take on greater importance.

As growth continues, the CEO’s role shifts yet again, this time to hiring leaders of leaders—or even leaders of leaders of leaders. Now, the CEO is juggling closing million-dollar sales with key customers, navigating strategic partnerships, working with the CFO to manage finances at scale, media interviews, building the brand, international expansion, raising capital from large institutional investors, and, of course, leading hundreds or thousands of employees. The skill set required here is worlds apart from that of the early days of coding and prototyping.

Entrepreneurship Is Constant Reinvention

Each phase of a company’s growth requires a radically different skill set: moving from building the idea to scaling a product, building the team, leading a large organization, and eventually creating a profitable business. The entrepreneur evolves from crafting the “secret sauce” to building a factory to mass-produce it.

I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who possessed all these skills from the start. The journey demands constant learning—whether it’s coding, product design, finances, fundraising, marketing, sales, or leadership.

I can testify to this: there were numerous times when I thought the company was a well-oiled machine. Six months later, things would feel like they were falling apart. It wasn’t because I had messed up, but because the environment had changed drastically in such a short time. I had to keep upping my game to keep pace with the company. I am completely different from—and better than—the version of myself a decade ago—and not just once, but many times over.

As an entrepreneur, be prepared. As your company scales, you’re effectively getting a new job every few months. This journey is thrilling and challenging, and filled with lifelong learning and self-improvement.

The Biggest Takeaway

And yet, the most important product you’re building isn’t your company’s product. It isn’t even the company—it’s yourself.

If, every two years, you’re not almost unrecognizable from your former self, you’re not growing fast enough, and you will be left behind by your own fast-growing company.

This takeaway isn’t just for CEOs. It applies to anyone working at a fast-scaling company and to anyone with a growth mindset. If you get this right, everything else will follow, and you’ll be in good shape. From my experience, this is one of the most crucial mindset-building tools you can have.

P.S. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given.