The secret to scaling is stopping
Why myself and my co-founders of a delivery company spent months doing deliveries ourselves, and how that’s the opposite of what most scaling advice tells you.
I’m Rob.
I’ve been starting, running, and occasionally saving companies for over 30 years… Now I’m co-founder and COO of Trexity. We’ve done over 2 million deliveries. I’ve personally done more of them than I’d like to admit.
Brand new to the site? I suggest you start here
I’ve actually spent my last penny
The story of the Christmas I wrote a cheque I couldn’t cash — and what it taught me about the difference between “tight” and “broke.”
A simple price to pay
We tried dynamic pricing. It made perfect sense on paper. Here’s why we killed it.
You’re Not Busy. You’re Just Doing AI’s Job.
Everyone’s worried about AI taking jobs. They’re asking the wrong question. Most of what we call work — synthesis, comparison, formatting, gathering data from six places — isn’t thinking. It’s assembly. And we’ve been doing it with the most expensive tool in the company: our brains. AI didn’t take my investor reports or financial prep. It freed me from work that was never meant for a human in the first place.
I Haven’t Written a Line of Code in 25 Years. I Just Built 6 Apps.
I haven’t touched code in 25 years. I just built six production apps that replaced subscriptions, cut hours of weekly work, and kept our dev team focused on the platform. The excuse that you’re not technical just expired.
Heroes Can’t Scale
Our CEO became the lead sales person. Our CPO codes features himself. I’ve done deliveries when we were underwater. Every one of us has been the hero. And it’s killing us. This isn’t ego. It’s passion. And passion without lanes is chaos. Heroes can’t scale. Cogs can.
We’ve Run Five Offsites. Here’s What We Got Wrong
It took us five offsites to figure it out. Too much agenda. No strategy before. Momentum that evaporates the day you leave. This time we kept the team two extra days after the sessions ended. Just working together. It built culture and solved follow-through in one move.
I Asked for a Bowl Once
I asked a hotel staff member for a larger bowl. He brought me one. The next morning it was already at my seat. Every morning after that, same thing. Nobody asked. He just remembered. That’s customer service. The small thing that costs nothing but signals everything.
Deferral
Founders defer pay, vacations, health, family, friendships. Everything. In the hopes it eventually works out. But the deferral rarely gets repaid. Fail, and you lose it all. Succeed, and you become an executive managing what you built. Either way, you become the thing you left.
Hiring is lazy
We hired a team to manage routes, assign bonuses, and call couriers. It worked so well that leadership had no idea. We thought the system was running. It wasn’t. People were running it. By the time we realized, the manual process was baked into our DNA.
Chasing Everything Means Catching Nothing
Growth is slow, so we chase the next opportunity. But growth is slow because we never commit long enough to see if the plan works. The distraction causes the problem that justifies more distraction. We have to protect the plan long enough to know if it actually works.
Every Merchant We Rushed to Launch, We Launched Twice
We wanted a merchant live in two weeks. Their team wasn’t ready, so we built around them. They launched. It broke. Now we maintain that feature forever. Every shortcut we took to close faster became work we owned forever. The fix is patience.
You’re Broke. Stop Acting Like You’re Not.
I’ve been at zero. Put my own money in to cover payroll. So I know the mistake most founders make when they get there: they keep operating like nothing changed. When you’re broke, there’s only one question: does this put money in the bank this week?
We Finished Our 2026 Plan Two Weeks Ago. It’s Already Wrong. Here’s Why That’s Fine.
Two weeks ago, I shared our 2026 plan. Six Canadian cities. Clear targets. The next day, an enterprise customer asked us to open seven American cities. Our CEO is in Denver right now. The goal doesn’t change. The path just got a lot more interesting.
Don’t nickel and dime
Team members. Investors. Advisors. The Board. Everyone suggests ways to squeeze more from existing customers. Subscriptions. Surcharges. Box size fees. Every idea makes sense on a spreadsheet. We keep saying no. The discipline isn’t saying no once. It’s saying no every quarter when someone new brings the same idea with different math.
How Long to Stay Confused at Scale
We spent $20K a month on marketing. Got 700 downloads. Ten deliveries. Seven customers. My cofounder wanted to kill it. I wanted data. Here’s how we structured the uncertainty instead of pretending we knew the answer.
Set the pace
A customer wanted us in six cities. So we opened six cities. Here’s what a year of bleeding taught us about the difference between following and pace-setting.Retry
Fast Software: Build What You Need, When You Need It
Building custom software for your exact needs is now faster and cheaper than subscribing to platforms built for everyone. Generic software is dying because you can build exactly what you need in days, not months—and keep it only as long as it’s useful.
10X Forces You to Stop Bullshitting Yourself
When you’re trying to double revenue, every initiative looks promising. You can chase 50 different opportunities and convince yourself they all make sense. You’ll waste months testing marginal improvements while your core business stays mediocre
AI is just another layer, not the destination
AI isn’t a destination but a service layer that will fade into the background of how business works.
With AI it’s the question, not the answer
With AI and operations, your answer will only be as good as your own experience.
5 biggest mistakes I’ve made as a startup founder
No one is perfect and at the pace that startups operate at, mistakes happen often. What makes startups completely unique is that mistakes often mean progress, they mean you are testing the boundaries, trying new things.
Making it manual
Senior team updates are important. Strike that. Senior team updates are VERY important. Something of this importance should not be left to automation.
Dilution
There is a cost of doing business — any business — and that cost always comes in the form of dilution.
The Entrepreneur Mindset
I’ve never really thought about what “being” an entrepreneur means. I figured it was pretty simple — you are one or your aren’t.
Startups are hard to keep moving forward
Being a leader of a startup — especially in any operations role — is one of the hardest things to do properly in business.
Challenge your team
The most important thing that leads to startup success (even more-so than luck, timing, hard work and persistence) is solving a problem in a different way from competitors.
What’s in your control
There are two business types: one you control and one that controls you. A co-founder who survived the pandemic and thrived by managing conservative cashflow and growing from profit shares insights. Unlike many overly reliant on investments, he prioritized sustainable, self-sufficient growth, illustrating the essence of true business control.