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What it argues
High Growth Handbook is Elad Gil's guide to the operational and organizational challenges that arise once a startup has found product-market fit and needs to scale from dozens of employees to hundreds or thousands. Gil is an investor and former operator who has worked with or backed companies including Airbnb, Stripe, Square, and Coinbase. The book addresses a gap in the startup literature: most startup advice is about getting to traction, but relatively little discusses what breaks immediately afterward and how to fix it.
The book is organized around the specific problems that emerge at scale: when to hire a COO, how the CEO's job changes as the company grows, how to build a board that helps rather than hinders, how to manage the transition from founder-led hiring to systematic recruiting, how to think about M&A as a scaling tool, and how late-stage fundraising works. Each chapter includes a long-form interview with a founder or executive who has navigated that specific problem — Marc Andreessen on boards, Claire Hughes Johnson on scaling operations, Keith Rabois on executive hiring.
What it gets right
- 1.
The CEO's job changes dramatically at scale. The skills that got a company to product-market fit — high personal involvement, direct problem-solving — actively harm performance in a company of 200 or more people.
- 2.
Boards become liabilities when founders don't manage them. The founders who get the most from their boards treat board management as a recurring priority, not a formality before the quarterly meeting.
- 3.
Hiring a COO too early is as common a mistake as hiring one too late. The right time is when the CEO has a specific set of operational problems they need to hand off, not when the company feels generally chaotic.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Elad Gil is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, operator, and investor. He was an early employee at Google, co-founded Mixer Labs (acquired by Twitter), and served as vice president of corporate strategy at Twitter. As an angel investor and venture capitalist, he has backed companies including Airbnb, Stripe, Square, Coinbase, Instacart, and Pinterest, typically at early stages. High Growth Handbook draws on his dual experience as an operator who has scaled organizations and as an investor who has advised founders navigating rapid growth. He publishes occasional essays at blog.eladgil.com.
