Why I Founded Radycle: Lessons from Scaling Startups to Fortune 500 Companies

When I walked into Outfit7 as their Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Operating Officer, I thought I knew exactly what to expect. I'd just come from senior roles at Discovery and HiT Entertainment/Mattel—global media giants with sophisticated operations, world-class legal teams, and meticulously crafted processes for everything. Surely, I thought, a fast-growing startup would just need a scaled-down version of what worked in the corporate world.

My first assignment quickly challenged that assumption.

The 40-Page Contract

The founders asked me to review their standard commercial contract template. What I found was a 40-page document that was essentially an amalgamation of contracts they'd gathered from various sources—competitor agreements, partner templates, online resources—all stitched together into one comprehensive but ultimately unworkable document.

I understood exactly why they'd done it. They didn't have the budget for a major law firm to review every negotiation, and they were trying to do hard labour with limited in-house legal resources. Remember, this was years before ChatGPT could help draft legal templates (though even today, that comes with its own risks).

But here's what struck me: they were trying to solve a large company problem with large company tools, without the large company resources.

I sat down with the team and explained something that would become foundational to my thinking: "When you're a small business, what matters most is establishing relationships of trust. Legal contracts only come into play when that trust breaks down. Focus your energy on the termination clauses—that's where you're actually exposed. Everything else is just noise."

I also pointed out the practical reality: when you're negotiating with Disney, they're going to impose their template on you anyway. And if things go sideways and you end up in litigation? A company like Disney will always have more resources than a startup like Outfit7.

We completely redesigned their approach. We created streamlined templates that actually made sense for a growing business—documents that protected their intellectual property without creating friction in every negotiation. No more using Microsoft-style NDAs for simple partnership discussions.

The results were immediate: faster deal cycles, happier partners, better relationships. But more importantly, it freed up the team's mental energy to focus on what actually mattered—building great products.

But Corporate Discipline Still Matters

Here's where it gets interesting. While I was stripping away unnecessary complexity from the corporate playbook, I also noticed critical gaps where startup instincts were holding Outfit7 back.

For example, product development decisions were made through informal discussions between founders, the technical team, and the product team. No structured frameworks. No clear metrics. Just gut feel and whoever argued most passionately in meetings.

This is where corporate discipline actually adds value—even in a startup.

I introduced a simplified return on investment framework to guide product prioritisation discussions. Not the elaborate business case process you'd see at a Fortune 500 company, but something structured enough to make debates objective, ensure decisions were auditable for future learning, and most importantly, help the team improve over time.

The framework gave the team a shared language for trade-offs. It didn't slow them down—it actually accelerated decision-making by reducing endless circular debates.

This was my first realization: the best practices from startups and corporates don't naturally cross-pollinate. Each world has valuable lessons, but they rarely travel across the divide.

Learning from Both Sides

This insight deepened when I co-founded Healthily (Your.MD) and scaled it to over 30 million users. Running a digital health startup taught me the power of rapid experimentation, staying close to users, and making bold bets with incomplete information. But it also showed me that as you scale, you eventually need structure—not corporate bureaucracy, but thoughtful operational discipline around the things that actually matter.

Then I took those lessons to BP, where I led their Convenience and EV Labs. Working inside a FTSE 100 company gave me access to incredible infrastructure, resources, and expertise. But it also showed me how easily corporate processes can suffocate innovation if you're not careful.

The key? Knowing which corporate practices to keep, which startup approaches to preserve, and most importantly, how to adapt both to your specific context.

For example:

• Startups excel at: Speed, customer obsession, willingness to pivot, flat decision-making

• Corporates excel at: Risk management, governance, sustainable operations, leveraging scale

• The challenge: Most companies try to import the entire playbook from one environment without adapting it

Why Tailored Approaches Beat Templates

Here's what I learned across environments ranging from seed-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies: there is no universal playbook.

A Series A healthcare startup can't operate like BP. But BP's innovation lab can't operate like a typical Fortune 500 division either. And a scale-up entering regulated markets needs something different from both.

Yet most consulting firms and advisory practices try to apply the same frameworks everywhere:

• Strategy consultants bring corporate methodologies that crush startup speed

• Startup advisors bring "move fast and break things" mentality that creates existential risk in regulated industries

• Process consultants bring standardization that destroys the flexibility companies need to compete

This is why I founded Radycle in 2014.

After seeing brilliant teams struggle—not because they lacked talent, but because they were using the wrong tools for their stage and context—I knew there was a better way. Companies needed advisors who had actually lived in multiple environments and understood how to blend the best of different worlds.

What This Means Today

If anything, this need has intensified. Companies today face:

• AI integration that requires both startup-style experimentation and corporate-level governance

• Regulatory complexity that demands structure without killing innovation

• Talent competition where the best people want startup culture but enterprise stability

• Sustainability mandates that require long-term thinking with near-term adaptation

Success requires hybrid approaches—taking corporate discipline where it adds value, preserving startup agility where it matters, and knowing which is which for your specific situation.

That's what Radycle does. We don't sell frameworks. We help leadership teams figure out which practices from which environments will actually work for their unique circumstances. Because the companies that win aren't the ones using the "best" playbook—they're the ones using the right playbook for where they are and where they're going.

Your Turn

What's your experience? Have you seen companies struggle by applying practices from the wrong context? Or found surprising success by blending approaches from different worlds?

I'd love to hear your stories—drop a comment or reach out at info@radycle.com.

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