If you’ve never heard of the human-resources start-up Zenefits, get ready to never forget it.

The company announced last week an escalating series of errors and investigations that will most likely go down as a defining scandal of the latest tech boom.

The situation looks bad, and is likely to get worse. It’s bad in ways specific to this start-up, but also in larger ways — ways that highlight how last year’s enormous funding rounds and their attendant overinflated expectations may wreak havoc on Silicon Valley for years to come.

In particular, Zenefits may be among the first of several cautionary tales to highlight a sobering lesson: For a start-up, growing too quickly can produce just as spectacular a failure as growing too slowly.

First, the back story: Zenefits is a three-year-old company that makes software for small businesses. In its short life span, it has been called both the most unsexy company in tech, and one of the most promising.