Why Early-Stage Foundations Matter More Than We Think

Reflections from five years mentoring early-stage founders

For the last five years, I’ve supported early-stage founders across a mix of programs and advisory roles and for the past three years I’ve returned to Curtin Ignition as a mentor. I work with founders at different points in their journey, and I stay actively engaged in early-stage work because the habits, structures and leadership foundations formed here shape everything that comes later.

No matter the cohort, industry or experience level, the same pattern keeps resurfacing:

the foundations built early don’t stay early, they follow you.They influence how a founder leads, hires, makes decisions and handles the complexity that inevitably arrives with growth.

Early-stage looks small from the outside, but it isn’t

There’s a common assumption that early-stage is all experiments, pitch decks and rapid iteration. Those things matter; however, they are not what determines whether a startup can scale.

When I look at the mid-stage founders I work with, it’s clear that the hiring challenges, misalignment, prioritisation gaps, role confusion and bottlenecked decisions they’re facing didn’t suddenly appear at 20 or 30 staff, they were simply amplified there.

They were seeded in the early days, when structure felt optional and momentum took priority.

And that’s completely understandable. Early-stage is fast, fluid and resource constrained. But the way a founder operates in those moments shapes how the business will function later, when pressure, people and complexity inevitably increase.

The foundations that actually matter

When I talk about foundations, I’m not referring to theory or pitch decks.I mean the practical components that determine whether a business can grow without breaking:

• Leadership identity, who the founder needs to become as complexity increases

• Role ownership and accountability, who does what, and who decides what

• Decision-making structure, how decisions are made, escalated and communicated

• Operating cadence, the weekly, monthly and quarterly rhythms that drive execution

• Alignment on the core problem, not just the solution or idea

These are not “later-stage” concerns.They are early-stage levers that shape everything that follows.

Founders who invest in these foundations early don’t necessarily grow faster, they grow with far less friction. And when scale arrives, they have the structural strength to support it.

Why I stay connected to early-stage mentoring

Most of my work today is with founders navigating growth, as they expand teams, make higher-stakes decisions and evolve into a CEO role. But I continue mentoring early-stage founders because this is where the future CEO first begins to form.

It’s during these early programs, Ignition, accelerators, pre-seed advisory, where founders start developing the assumptions, habits and operating rhythms that will later define how effectively they lead through complexity.

Early-stage isn’t the warm-up.It’s the formative stage, the point where trajectory is set.

Being part of that moment matters, both for the founders themselves and for the strength of our broader WA ecosystem.

A final thought

After five years mentoring early-stage founders and working closely with mid-stage operators, one thing is consistently clear:

Startups don’t rise to the level of their ambition.They rise to the level of their foundations.

That’s why I remain committed to both sides, supporting early-stage founders to build the groundwork they’ll rely on later, and supporting scaling founders refine the systems, leadership identity and operating models that allow them to grow beyond the founder.

Because great companies aren’t built at scale.They’re built long before it.

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