In Silicon Valley, asking 'How many employees do you have?' is a proxy for 'How successful are you?' It's a vanity metric. If you have 1,000 employees and linear revenue growth, you don't have a scale
In Silicon Valley, asking 'How many employees do you have?' is a proxy for 'How successful are you?' It's a vanity metric. If you have 1,000 employees and linear revenue growth, you don't have a scale problem; you have an efficiency problem. The most valuable companies of the next decade will be those that decouple revenue growth from headcount growth.
The Hiring Trap
When I started JotForm, I made a rule: avoid hiring until it hurts. Why?
Because every new hire adds complexity. Communication lines multiply. Speed decreases. Culture dilutes. Instead, we focused on building systems. If a support ticket could be answered by a bot, we built the bot. If an invoice could be auto-generated, we wired the API. We reached millions of users with a team that fit in a single conference room.
Revenue Per Employee: The Only Metric
Forget 'unicorn' valuations. Look at Revenue Per Employee (RPE). The industry average for SaaS is around $200k. Top automation-first companies push this to $500k, $1M, or even more. High RPE means you have leverage. It means your margins are bulletproof. It means you can weather a downturn without mass layoffs.
Automation is Your Digital Workforce
Think of automation not as software, but as a digital workforce that works 24/7, makes zero errors, and costs pennies. Your human team provides the vision; your digital team provides the execution. This hybrid model isn't just cheaper; it's faster. We release features in days, not months, because our engineers aren't bogged down in maintenance.
Growth is good. Bloat is bad. Scale your impact, not your org chart.
