When BETA TECHNOLOGIES passed 150 people, they weren’t just adding headcount—they were entering a new era. More teams. More locations. More ambitious, interconnected work. The mission — to electrify aviation — was as clear as ever, but complexity was accelerating. As that complexity grew, so did the challenge of:

• Sustaining cross-functional clarity on the most important priorities

• Maintaining visibility into where energy and attention were flowing week to week

• Effectively connecting emerging challenges to the right skills and people

Kyle Clark , BETA’s visionary CEO, saw the friction forming in real time. When Adam and I shared the system we were building — a way to make strategy operational in the weekly rhythm of the business — he didn’t just agree. He said:

“Others might find this valuable,...I know BETA will. Come build it here.”

Initially, we called it Project Starling, named after the murmuration patterns of starlings—thousands of individuals moving as one, fluid and in sync, a visual metaphor for how modern companies should aspire to: Coordinated movement at scale.

Feeling Headwinds To Progress

If you're a leader in a fast-growing organization, you probably know what Kyle was feeling:

Things are going well—but also, something’s shifting. You're moving fast, but clarity is harder to hold onto. Your team is growing, but alignment is getting harder to maintain. The same systems and instincts that fueled early success? They aren't the ones to carry the business through its next chapter.

We built Alignd for leaders at this moment — the inflection point where growth begins to outpace the systems meant to support it.

And the first signs aren’t usually dramatic. They’re subtle, but familiar:

• Priorities start to blur across functions

• Weekly meetings feel more like status updates than strategic levers

• Teams get busier, but it’s not clear if they’re focused on the right things

• You wonder if your best people are working on the highest-impact challenges

It’s not a failure. It’s a phase change—and almost every successful company reaches it.

The more leaders we've worked with, the more we've heard some version of:

“I know everyone is working hard...but are we all working on the right things? We’re cobbling together Slack, Asana, Google Docs, dashboards… but it’s not working.”

They aren't short on tools. They're short on alignment.

What Gets Missed in the Middle of Growth?

Here’s what we kept seeing:

• Strategic drift: Big goals made sense at the top, but got fuzzy downstream

• Talent disconnect: Strong people were underutilized or misaligned

• System fragmentation: Communication, progress, and decision-making were scattered, teams were siloing

And as complexity increased, so did the hidden cost: lost time, duplicated work, disengaged teams, and missed opportunities.

Connecting The Dots Between People, Priorities and Progress

We've spent 2.5 years inside BETA, a remarkable company, driven by an incredible team, focused on revolutionizing aviation. The result of our collaboration is Alignd—a platform designed to help every team member answer three essential questions every week:

1. What are we focused on?

2. How are we doing?

3. Who can help?

When those answers are alive and visible, strategy becomes execution. Not quarterly. Weekly. Consistently.

As we bring other organizations onto Alignd, we invite leaders who are starting to feel the strain of scale to know:

This is the turning point. The moment when what got you here won’t get you there. When speed alone stops being an advantage—and alignment becomes the differentiator.

We built Alignd for this exact phase: when priorities multiply, complexity creeps in, and instinct no longer scales. It’s not about adding another tool. It’s about creating a new operating rhythm—where strategy is visible, people are connected, and progress is felt every single week.

If you're starting to feel the strain, you're right on time. Let’s build the rhythm that carries you forward.

- Rich Price is Co-Founder of Alignd

If you want to see some truly breathtaking photos of how BETA is changing aviation, you should follow the one and only Brian Jenkins .