Importance of Recalibrating Corporate Governance and Structure During Growth Stages

Founders, as you ponder the direction of your company in 2026, are you confident that your business is structured for where it’s going rather than where it started?

We are born into the world with the instinct to survive. Businesses start the same way. The focus is on survival from the first corporate breath. Speed matters. Quick decisions are imperative. Corporate structure is a secondary concern. Founders rely on what gets the company up and running the fastest and whatever works in the moment to move the company forward. Perfectly normal and understandable.

But, has your company outgrown its original structure? From the outside, your company may look bigger and stronger, yet it is operating from the same foundational setup that supported a much smaller enterprise. I see this come up most often when a company starts talking to investors or preparing for a potential exit. Early on, the ownership structure made sense when everyone was contributing, things were moving fast, and getting started mattered more than getting everything perfect. The company was formed quickly, with the idea that the details could be cleaned up later. But later arrives at an inconvenient time. Suddenly, an investor asks why equity doesn’t line up with current roles, or why someone who hasn’t been involved in years still owns a meaningful percentage of the company. Or a buyer wants to understand the corporate structure and discovers an entity that was fine for a scrappy startup, but creates tax, governance, or liability issues at scale. What were once temporary decisions such as a handshake understanding, a rushed formation, or an early shortcut quietly become permanent simply because the business kept growing. And by the time those issues surface, they’re no longer theoretical. They affect valuation, timing, and leverage in very real ways.

Strong companies don’t just grow. They periodically recalibrate. You don’t need to rebuild everything. But ignoring structure entirely is how small gaps turn into real friction later, especially when growth, new investors, or exit scenarios enter the picture.

With the new year upon us, this is a great time for founders to consider in what ways their business needs recalibrating.