Sessions · Advisor session
Scaling Your Company: Roundtable with Darrell Cavens (Zulily Co-founder)
Tuesday, December 1, 2026 · 1–2 PM PST
About this session
Growing past the early team changes everything: the org, the systems and your own role as a founder. Darrell Cavens co-founded Zulily and scaled it into a public company. In this roundtable he joins a small group of founders to work through the real questions that come up when scaling.
Who it's for: VC-backed founders whose teams are growing fast, at roughly 50-200 people.
What we'll cover
What breaks as the team grows from ~50 to 200 people, and what to fix before it does
Building systems and processes for cross-team work without slowing down
Keeping the culture you want as layers of management come in
Which leaders to hire first, and what the founder should let go of when
Format
Each founder introduces themselves: name, company and their specific scaling question
Darrell introduces himself
Open roundtable discussion around the founders' questions
Come with one concrete scaling challenge you're facing right now.
Why attend
- Bring your own scaling question and get input from the co-founder of Zulily
- Small roundtable with founders facing the same growth challenges
- Learn how to evolve your team, systems and role as the company grows
Hosting this session
Darrell Cavens
Zulily (Co-founder)
Darrell Cavens is the co-founder and former CEO of Zulily, the Seattle-based e-commerce company he helped scale from launch to a public company and a multi-billion-dollar acquisition. Before Zulily, Darrell was a senior technology and operations leader at Blue Nile. Today Darrell advises and invests in founders building and scaling their companies.
Next step
Find support beyond the session.
Have a question before applying? Tell us what you’re working through. If your company qualifies, we’ll reply personally within 24 hours.
For companies that have raised at least $1M from venture firms.