Scaling Fast - by Swizec Teller Paperback

Book Synopsis

What happens when your startup hits the hockey stick?

Customers are flooding in, deadlines are relentless, and your engineering team is drowning in technical debt. Scaling isn't optional-it's survival.

In Scaling Fast: Software Engineering Through the Hockeystick, veteran startup engineer Swizec Teller shares hard-won lessons from leading teams through hypergrowth. From women's health startups scaling to nine-figure Series B rounds to biotech platforms going from zero to eight-figure revenue in just three years, this is a practical guide to thriving when demand explodes.

You'll learn how to:

• Scale the business without losing product-market fit
• Grow teams with trust, delegation, and high-output culture
• Balance speed, quality, and technical debt
• Use feature flags, small-a agile, and continuous delivery to keep shipping
• Know when to let small fires burn-and when to fix them fast
• Architect your code to increase velocity and reduce bugs

Drawing on real startup war stories, this book shows what works (and what doesn't) when your company is growing faster than your systems can handle.

If you liked Accelerate, The Phoenix Project, Team Topologies, or The Lean Startup, Scaling Fast is your engineer's playbook for surviving-and thriving-in hypergrowth.

Whether you're an engineer on your first rocket ship, a tech lead managing rapid growth, or a founder scaling without breaking everything, this book will help you navigate chaos, build resilient systems, and keep moving forward.

Early praise for Scaling Fast:

"Scaling Fast is a superb introduction to Software Engineering. It covers the soft skills necessary to execute on a high-functioning team, as well as coding skills necessary to ship well-designed features. I can't recommend it strongly enough."

Adam Rackis

Software Engineer & Author

"Congrats on PMF. Now don't blow it. Swizec is a grizzled veteran of the surreal PMF terrain where opportunity and danger lurk. He's created the field guide that shows you how to keep your head, keep your customers, and turn traction into lasting strength."

Kyle Mathews

Founder of Gatsby and ElectricSQL

"The year is 2025, and somehow Swizec Teller wrote a tech book without a single YAML deployment snippet or AI hype cycle diagram. Instead, Scaling Fast brings us something far more valuable: a practical, honest, and often funny guide to what actually makes fast-growing software companies succeed - people, teams, and a bit of architectural sanity."

Bas Steins

Engineering Leader

Review Quotes

Book Review 1:

Shawn Swyx Wang, founder of Latent Space

One of the most important skillsets in a career in tech startups is scaling yourself through hypergrowth - there is no greater wealth engine in Silicon Valley when you get it right, and there is no other skillset more underestimated by developers who rather fixate on pure code. This is the first book I've seen focused on helping you scale the business, scale the team, and scale the tech in your next startup, from someone who's now done it twice!

Book Review 2:

Kitze, founder of Zero To Shipped

When your projects find their market and it's time to scale a few orders of magnitude, this is the book for you"

Book Review 3:

Glen Stovall, author of Product Thinking for Engineers

As a recent IC-turned-engineering manager at a fast-growing company. I've found this book invaluable! Since reading it, I've ruthlessly cut back on the amount of parallel work streams and soloist developers, and focused I've on having everyone work as a team. We're getting more done, and I have more confidence in handing off more authority and autonomy to the team."

Book Review 4:

Kyle Mathews, founder of Gatsby and ElectricSQL

"Congrats on PMF. Now don't blow it. Swizec is a grizzled veteran of the surreal PMF terrain where opportunity and danger lurk. He's created the field guide that shows you how to keep your head, keep your customers, and turn traction into lasting strength."

Book Review 5:

Bas Steins, host of Conversations with people in tech

The year is 2025, and somehow Swizec Teller wrote a tech book without a single YAML deployment snippet or AI hype cycle diagram. Instead, Scaling Fast brings us something far more valuable: a practical, honest, and often funny guide to what actually makes fast-growing software companies succeed - people, teams, and a bit of architectural sanity.

As someone who's seen growth from both the "just ship it" trenches and the "why are we rewriting this again?" meeting rooms, I can say this book hits close to home. Swizec doesn't waste time on silver bullets. He gives you actionable advice for the messy middle: how to keep teams productive as headcounts double, how to build tech that doesn't collapse under its own cleverness, and how to stay focused on real business outcomes while your startup hurtles through hockey-stick growth.

It's part therapy, part playbook, and fully worth your time.