"We're too early for operations." I've heard this a lot recently, and get the instinct. When you're still chasing product-market fit or racing toward the next milestone, ops feels like something you can worry about later. But think about building a house. You don't pour the foundation after the second floor is framed. You pour it first, because everything above it depends on how solid it is. Operations is your foundation. The informal, ad hoc ways you work at 5 people won't hold together at 20. If you haven't built basic structure, documentation, and execution habits early on, things don't just slow down. They break. It's never too early to get ops in order. Early is exactly when the foundation has to be built right.