One founder’s mistake of taking on too much while the company scaled

Founder Ed Wu studied to be a physician, but he always harbored the belief he’d start a company one day. “I’ve always had an inkling to go either run a health system or run a company of some kind,” he told Founder Brew.

After Wu earned his undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, he continued his studies there, eventually earning both an MD and MBA. During those years, he picked up a certain mentality: a do-it-all, always-find-the-solution perspective.

“As a doc, you’re just trained, ‘Hey, let’s just try to solve it all. Let’s just try to do all of it.’” he told Founder Brew.

In 2020, Wu, along with two co-founders, Abhi Chandra and Vivek Vishwanath, created Aviary Health, a telehealth company focused on cardiac rehab. Chandra, the CEO, focused on the platform’s technology strategy and raising capital. Vishwanath oversaw sales and partnerships. Wu assumed leadership on the rest—including healthcare compliance, hiring, legal, finance, and operations.

His can-do approach served him well in the early days of building a company.

“The early founder wisdom is: Be tenacious, try to solve it all, don’t quit, work harder, pedal faster, push through uncertainty,” he said. “I agree with a lot of that.”

But his perspective changed after the company grew.

“As you mature a company a little bit and/ or get more people, you realize that may be the wrong thing to do,” he told Founder Brew.

Breaking point

In late 2025, Wu started working on a now-public advocacy initiative, Pinnie Health, after he spotted a growth area for the business, but he kept many of the same responsibilities.

Bottlenecks started to form. For example, a contract could take extra days to go out because Wu needed to be involved.

Then, a key executive went on leave. Since many of her issue areas would be dropped on Wu’s plate, his two co-founders stepped in, which at first disappointed Wu.

“It was hard to hear because at times, I knew that it could be done faster,” he explained. “That might have been the case years ago where I could have been done faster, but now, as we just wear so many hats, that was actually slowing things down.”

Lessons learned

This spring, Wu and his co-founders had a serious conversation about how much Wu had taken on.

Though he challenged himself to learn how to let go, Wu learned that the same founder mentality that helps you build the company can also cause issues as the company scales.

“At some point, running a 10-person company is very different than running a 30 or 40-person company,” Wu explained. “I was saying, ‘Oh, this is still a small company. Let me just handle that.’”

For instance, new business meetings he would’ve previously attended were suddenly held without him. Though it was hard, he was “pleasantly surprised” they still went well without him.

For founders in similar circumstances, Wu says ripping the Band-Aid off entirely is the way to go.

“Pulling as much out as possible was the best way to do it, as opposed to paring away a little bit by little bit,” he said.

And for founders who haven’t yet reached similar circumstances, Wu shares his rule of thumb for making sure you aren’t causing similar bottlenecks.

Taking stock of how you spend a workday, if 20%–30% of your time is being spent on something someone else in the company, or some process, could alleviate, it’s time to take a look in the mirror. The only things that should stay are items that are “pivotal to the growth of your company,” he said.

“Once you reach the point of 20%–30%, call it a third of your time,” Wu explained, “I think it reaches an inefficiency for the company.”