Efficiency over headcount

I've seen the same movie twice. At Linio and at Grin, teams went from 200 to 2,000 people and then had to shrink. When you grow like that, every problem gets solved with a hire. It works for a while. Then the structure weighs more than the business.

At Clara we took a different path. We're about 400 people across the region and, over the same period, revenue grew more than 10x. It isn't magic or austerity for its own sake: it's one question we ask before opening any role.

Could technology or a process solve this? If the answer is yes, we build that first. If we still need a person afterwards, we hire with a much clearer role.

I learned this in customer experience. At Linio, self-service lowered the contact ratio, and we got to solving 90% of requests in under 24 hours. At Clara, invoice recovery from a single photo does what used to be manual work for our customers' finance teams.

Efficiency is also discipline. Since 2022, every dollar we invest is tied to a return and we track CAC payback. The same logic applies to headcount: one more person is an investment, and it has to pay back.

This doesn't mean small teams on principle. It means teams where every person does work only a person can do: deciding, selling, building relationships, solving what isn't in the playbook.

If you're about to open your next role, do the exercise first: describe the problem, not the job. Often the answer isn't someone else, but something better designed.