MAGIC AI is a team of 15 people, and in recent months, we’ve crossed £1m in revenue per employee.
I’ve found that sometimes people hear that number and assume I’m a cost-cutting obsessive running a boom-and-bust hiring operation. But we’ve actually achieved it through a really principled approach to hiring. If they’re not a bona fide expert in their field, then ultimately, I’m not interested.
Those of you in the startup world will be familiar with this story: you hit a milestone, you embark on a hiring spree, you hit your next milestone, you hire another batch of people, so on, so on. In this cycle, headcount becomes the proxy for progress, and as your org chart gets bigger, you really feel like you’re building something at an impressive pace.
I’ve never really bought into that way of thinking. Every hire we make has to be a world-class expert who fully owns their domain, rather than several people who know their specialist area well, but not much more so than, say, myself. I want people who are an order of magnitude better than I’d ever be at managing the aspects of MAGIC AI that they’re responsible for.
Here’s the maths that took me some time to get my head around: ten people who are “okay” average out to okay, but you can’t average your way to world-class. One expert who truly owns their domain, on the other hand, is the kind of person who can really change a business’s direction and, ultimately, its long-term health.
The best signal I’ve found that I’ve hired right is when I’m the least impressive person in the room on a given topic. If I’m the most clued up on precisely how we’re marketing our product, for instance, it indicates to me that I may have hired wrong. My team leads should really run circles around me in their domain. Funnily enough, that actually makes me feel more comfortable these days.
What changes when you get this right is what stops happening. Decisions get made without me, not because people are ignoring me, but because they don’t need me. Quality goes up in the areas without my oversight, and the business stops being a reflection of my individual ceiling and instead starts becoming the collective upper limit of some of the smartest people I know.
I’d take that way of working over a headcount of 50 any day of the week.
Varun Bhanot is Co-founder and CEO of MAGIC AI, the cutting-edge AI mirror that makes high-quality fitness coaching more accessible. Under his leadership, MAGIC AI has raised $5 million in venture funding and earned multiple industry accolades — including being named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2024. As a new father as well as founder, Varun shares candid insights on balancing parenting and entrepreneurship in his bi-monthly guest column, Startup Daddy.
This content is contributed by a guest author. Startups.co.uk / MVF does not endorse or take responsibility for any views, advice, analysis or claims made within this post.
