When you start a company everything is going to feel like a mess. And it really should. If you have too much process, too much predictability, you are probably not innovating fast enough and creatively enough.

Treat customer support as a product.

If people start going to a desk, some one individual employees desk and they don't report to them... it's a sign that they believe that person can help them. So if you see that consistently, those are your barrels. Just promote them, give them more opportunity as fast as you can.

Basically this is what you want - a high performance machine that idiots can run.

The real thing you do is you ask a lot of questions.

Most people will solve the problems they know how to solve. Roughly speaking they will solve B+ problems instead of A+ problems. A+ problems are high impact problems for your company but they're difficult problems.

The companies I have traditionally seen do best over the long term had lead investors for their seed rounds