When growth starts to cost you
THE PHASE THAT BREAKS COMPANIES
When a Swiss hard- or deep-tech company grows from 30 to 300 people, more changes than the number of chairs.
Decisions that used to take days start taking weeks. Engineering and business begin talking past each other. The people you hired six months ago no longer recognise the founding spirit. The first structures start feeling like bureaucracy.
That's the phase where a company becomes vulnerable. Many tear themselves apart — or lose their innovative edge while trying to protect it.
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Slow decisions — Days become weeks because alignment requires meetings, and meetings require alignment.
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Disconnected teams — Engineering, product, and business start talking past each other. Escalations become the default.
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Lost spirit — New hires don't know "why we do things this way". The founding energy fades quietly.
We're in the room where it stalls.
what we do
We work with you on the ground — one or two days a week, on site — and build the organisational mechanisms that survive this transition.
Quarterly rhythms that steer delivery instead of celebrating it. Interfaces between engineering, product and business that work before the escalation meeting. Decision pathways with pace and clear ownership.
3–5 mandates per year. Deep, not wide.
1–2 days per week on site at each client.
6–24 months per engagement. Built to leave.
What we build is more than process.
the core idea
It's the Operating System of your organization: how decisions happen, how teams coordinate, how new hires absorb "why we do things this way" without being told, and how innovation keeps happening as the firm scales.
When it works, it runs by itself — and your people stop spending energy on coordination and start spending it on the actual work.
Engagement models
how we work together
Four ways to engage, suited to different phases and needs.
01 · Embedded Scaling Partner (primary model)
1–2 days per week, on site, 6–24 months. Day rate or fixed monthly retainer. Three to five mandates running in parallel — never more.
02 · Fractional Employment
Part-time employment (40–60%), 12–24 months. Explicit end date from day one — built to leave. For companies that want operator depth, not consultant distance.
03 · Diagnostic Sprint
2–4 weeks, focused assessment with sharp recommendations. For mature teams that need outside calibration, not rebuilding.
04 · Board / Advisory
Selective, longer-term, monthly cadence. Only for companies we've already worked with deeply.
For whom?
swiss hard- and deep-tech scale-ups
Late Series A to Series B, typically 30–300 employees in rapid growth, with the founder team still close to operations.
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Hardware, regulated tech, deep tech with engineering-heavy products
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Post-funding phase where structure starts to break
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Founder-driven, not yet structured
You're probably in our zone if
✓ You're hiring engineering managers faster than you can develop them
✓ External software or hardware partners cost more energy than they return
✓ Recent hires don't know "why we do things the way we do"
✓ Quarterly planning has become ceremony, not steering
David Baer
your partner
David Baer is Managing Director of KEGON Switzerland and leads the Scale-Up Practice.
Over the last decade he has worked with Swiss corporates and growth companies on one question: how to scale operations without breaking the team that got you there.
His background combines an ETH education, deep agile and SAFe practice, and hands-on operational design. He personally leads every scale-up mandate — embedded, on site, with the full KEGON network behind him.
Based near Zurich. Working with companies across Switzerland.
Clarity matters more than positioning
what we're not
→ Not an hourly mentor. We know our clients deeply enough to build, not just advise.
→ Not HR. Org design and people development overlap, but they're not the same. We build mechanisms; HR builds culture and competence. You probably need both, sequenced right.
→ Not a framework salesperson. We know SAFe and similar approaches inside out — but methodology is a tool, not a religion.
→ Not a classic consultancy. No transformation theatre that falls asleep the day we leave.
Mandates and what stuck
references
The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (Foundation of Apertus) built a Quarterly Release Planning Operating System that's still the functioning heartbeat of the organization today.
CSCS
Now part of Marvell TechnologyTargeted interventions in a Swiss deep-tech team. Immediate effect.
Polariton
Multiple Swiss industrial corporations: Built working bridges between Swiss industrial corporates and their external software partners. Measurable lift in delivery reliability. Names on request.
Confidential Mandates