Startups love to believe their biggest challenges are technical. The wrong stack. The wrong platform. Not enough AI. But in this episode of The Tech Leaders Playbook, Avetis sits down with tech executive and author Marcus East to unpack a tougher truth.
It’s not the tech holding your startup back. It’s leadership behavior, culture, and how decisions actually get made when things get hard.
Marcus has spent his career inside both elite tech companies and century-old organizations navigating transformation. That perspective makes one thing clear. Tools do not fail companies. People and operating habits do.
Why tech isn’t the real blocker
Marcus challenges the idea that legacy or startup struggles are caused by outdated systems alone. He points to organizations like National Geographic, founded in the 1800s, that successfully reinvented themselves by focusing on customer needs instead of clinging to old delivery models.
At the same time, he has seen companies with massive tech budgets stall for years because leadership could not move the organization with them. The difference was not ambition or spend. It was clarity, accountability, and the willingness to change how work actually happens.
Startup leadership problems show up as culture
One of the strongest themes in the conversation is leadership presence. Marcus shares how transformation accelerates when leaders stay engaged in the details that matter. That includes asking how work connects to customers, how teams collaborate across silos, and how incentives shape behavior.
When leaders give lip service to transformation but reward only short-term outputs, teams protect the status quo. Over time, this creates confusion, burnout, and stalled momentum. Startup leadership problems often surface here first, long before any technical limitation does.
Accountability also plays a major role. In high-performing environments, misalignment gets addressed quickly. In lower-performing ones, projects drag on for years without a clear business case, while top performers quietly disengage.
Startup leadership problems kill AI ROI
Marcus makes a bold prediction. Only about five percent of companies investing directly in AI will see real return on investment. The reason is not the technology. It is that AI is layered onto inflexible systems and teams that already struggled to deliver outcomes.
Successful organizations lean into partnerships to close that gap. They do not pretend they can hire or build everything internally. Instead, they use partners to gain speed, modern practices, and execution leverage. This mirrors what HIRECLOUT sees across growing teams. Progress comes from alignment and support, not hype.
Build vs buy and the dinosaurs slowing teams down
On build versus buy, Marcus leans buy in today’s cloud-first world. Years ago, building from scratch could define a career. Today, the cost, time, and risk rarely justify it unless the capability is truly differentiating.
In his book Working with Dinosaurs, Marcus describes three dinosaurs that kill progress: people, legacy tech, and operating models. The hardest to address is people. Technology can be replaced. Operating models can evolve. But if teams are protecting old ways of working, transformation never sticks.
Final thoughts
This conversation is a powerful reminder that customers do not care about stacks, clouds, or AI strategies. They care about outcomes and experiences. When leaders focus on alignment, accountability, and realistic execution, progress follows.
If this is a topic you found interesting or want to go deeper on, you can connect with Marcus East on LinkedIn, and explore his thinking further. You can also purchase his book, Working with Dinosaurs, which expands on many of the leadership and transformation lessons discussed in this episode.
If these challenges resonate within your own organization, HIRECLOUT regularly works with leaders navigating growth, transformation, and talent decisions in fast-changing environments. You can learn more about how HIRECLOUT supports teams through these moments here.
Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs come not from new technology, but from asking better questions about how we lead, build, and adapt.
