If you’re a scale-up CxO or founder, the BlackBerry film is worth watching.
I nearly gave it a miss—the trailers looked slapstick. But beneath the surface chaos is one of the most honest portrayals of what happens when technical ambition collides with commercial speed.
It’s also a sharp lens on scale-up leadership in real time.
Startup Chaos Meets Commercial Pressure
The film is less about phones and more about friction. It beautifully captures the internal clashes that define scale-up moments:
🎤 A scrappy (but promising) idea needing a great pitch, not a polished product
🤼 A CEO pushing hard for commercial returns, while engineers obsess over details
👹 A no-nonsense COO storming in to “fix” the culture, labelling developers as “children”
Every scale-up hits this wall—when early brilliance meets the demand for speed and structure.
The Quiet Strength of a Hands-On CTO
One part that really stood out was the technical founder’s journey. Unlike the caricature of the distant tech visionary, he stayed close—from garage prototypes to full-scale product.
Even during pressure moments, he got involved—writing code, fixing issues, solving architecture.
🛠️ It’s a rare but powerful leadership trait. Being hands-on (without being in the weeds) helps you feel the rhythm of the team and guide decision-making with empathy and precision.
In our work with founders, this balance is a critical marker of effective scale-up leadership. It’s not about micromanaging—it’s about staying connected.
Speed Creates Breakthroughs
What ultimately shifted BlackBerry’s trajectory? A pitch for a product that didn’t exist yet.
It forced engineering to work with focus and speed—proving that constraints often spark innovation. This “build it because we said we would” approach echoes similar moments from Jobs and Musk, where speed becomes a forcing function for excellence.
In scale-ups, this dynamic is everywhere:
- Engineers want quality.
- Commercial teams want revenue.
- Leadership wants certainty.
And in the middle? Someone has to make the impossible feel inevitable.
Great Scale-Up Leadership Is Navigating This Tension
The BlackBerry film demonstrated how a firm was bobbing along, with very little traction. As soon as a more commercial person came on-board the pace changed and the team managed the “impossible”,
A good reminder for diversity in our teams and to look “elsewhere” when things aren’t going our way.
As it’s often said, when we hit a major block it’s often “WHO not HOW” that solves it.
