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In this Week's Newsletter
Latest Podcasts: What You Missed
The 10 Money Skills Every Microteam Should Master - You’re great at what you do. But if the money side of your business feels confusing, stressful, or weirdly fragile, this episode is required listening.
What Can You Learn from 22 Microteam Success Stories? (…Plus 1) - Real microteams, real results, and the repeatable patterns behind outsized growth with tiny teams… and one notable failure.
Interview with Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier - How Zapier scaled with leverage, automation, and focus instead of hiring and organizational bloat.
Interview with Fabian Veit, CEO of Make - How advanced automation helps microteams remove busywork and scale faster without added headcount.
The Week in Exponential Scale (In Case You Missed It)
Miss a few Daily issues while actually running your business? We’ve got you.
Here’s a quick skim of everything we shipped in the Daily newsletter last week.
Free Daily Drops
Master Time: Defining & Defending Your Zone of Genius Identify the 20% of work that creates 80% of your value, then ruthlessly defend that time from meetings, admin, and low-leverage tasks that drain you.
Use AI to Generate 30 Prospect Messages in 5 Minutes Stop agonizing over personalized outreach and let AI craft 30 unique, relevant prospect messages while you grab coffee.
The "2-Week Lookback" Rule: Every Two Weeks, Review the Calendar Spend 15 minutes every two weeks reviewing where your time actually went versus where you thought it went, then fix the gaps before they become habits.
Async Standup Protocol: Status Without Sync Meetings Replace daily standup meetings with asynchronous updates that take 3 minutes to write and zero coordination to consume.
Terraria (Re-Logic): Team Versatility Over Headcount How an 8-person team built a $500M+ game by hiring versatile generalists instead of specialized departments, proving small teams punch harder when everyone can wear multiple hats.
Demand Generation Resources for Microteams Thirty hand-picked tools, frameworks, and resources for generating demand without a marketing department, agency budget, or growth hacking guru.
The Zone of Genius Toolkit: Defend Your High-Leverage Time A complete time audit system with templates, blocking strategies, and delegation frameworks that help you reclaim 10+ hours a week for high-impact work.
AI Prospecting Prompt Library: Generate 30 Personalized Messages in Minutes Copy-paste prompts configured for LinkedIn, email, and cold outreach that generate contextual, non-spammy messages at scale.
The 2-Week Lookback Toolkit: Calendar Audit System A plug-and-play spreadsheet that categorizes every calendar block, flags time leaks, and shows exactly where to reclaim hours.
The Async Standup Toolkit: Complete Implementation System Ready-to-use templates, Slack/email formats, and team adoption scripts that eliminate daily sync meetings without losing visibility.
The Versatility Playbook: Building T-Shaped Teams That Punch 10x Above Their Weight A hiring and development framework for building teams where everyone owns outcomes across multiple functions instead of staying in lanes.
Daily News for Curious Minds
Be the smartest person in the room by reading 1440! Dive into 1440, where 4 million Americans find their daily, fact-based news fix. We navigate through 100+ sources to deliver a comprehensive roundup from every corner of the internet – politics, global events, business, and culture, all in a quick, 5-minute newsletter. It's completely free and devoid of bias or political influence, ensuring you get the facts straight. Subscribe to 1440 today.
Hiring Without Hiring: The Microteam Growth Paradox
You hit a bottleneck. Too much work, not enough people.
Your instinct screams: "I need to hire someone."
So you write the job description. Post it on LinkedIn. Interview 12 candidates. Negotiate offers. Onboard the new hire. Train them for weeks.
Three months later, you've added headcount. But you haven't solved the bottleneck—you've just added coordination overhead, payroll costs, and a new person who needs management.
Meanwhile, there's a better way. A way that adds capacity without adding headcount.
It's called "hiring without hiring."
And it's how the best microteams scale output without scaling the org chart.
The Founder Who Scaled to $3M Without a Single Employee
Let me tell you about Pieter Levels.
Pieter built Nomad List, Remote OK, and several other profitable products. Combined revenue: $3M+/year.
His team size? One. Just him.
No employees. No contractors (mostly). No "growth team." No "marketing department."
How?
He automated everything he could. He outsourced what couldn't be automated. He said no to work that didn't matter. And he built systems that scaled without human intervention.
Key moves:
Customer support: Built a comprehensive FAQ and self-serve knowledge base. Only answers complex questions manually (maybe 2-3/day).
Marketing: SEO-driven content that ranks organically. No ads team. No social media manager. Just good content that Google loves.
Development: He codes everything himself, but uses no-code tools and templates to move faster.
Payments/billing: Fully automated via Stripe.
Community moderation: Automated filters + community self-moderation.
Result: $3M/year revenue. $3M revenue per employee (it's just him).
"People ask me when I'm going to hire. I ask them: Why? What would a hire do that I can't automate, outsource, or eliminate?"
That's the mindset of "hiring without hiring."
What "Hiring Without Hiring" Actually Means
"Hiring without hiring" doesn't mean never hiring. It means exhausting every other option before adding headcount.
It's a hierarchy:
Tier 1: Eliminate
Can you just... not do this work? Is it actually necessary, or are you doing it because "that's what companies do"?
Examples:
Stop attending conferences that don't generate ROI
Kill features nobody uses
Stop doing "monthly reports" that nobody reads
You just added capacity by subtracting work.
Tier 2: Automate
Can software do this instead of a human?
Examples:
Use Zapier to automate lead routing (instead of hiring a VA)
Use Calendly to handle scheduling (instead of hiring an assistant)
Use Intercom bots to answer FAQ support tickets (instead of hiring support staff)
You just added capacity without adding payroll.
Tier 3: Systematize
Can you turn this messy process into a repeatable system that anyone (or AI) can follow?
Examples:
Template your sales emails so a tool or VA can send them
Document your onboarding process so it's self-serve
Create checklists for recurring tasks
You just added capacity by making work more efficient.
Tier 4: Outsource
Can you pay someone on-demand for this work, instead of hiring full-time?
Examples:
Upwork designer for one-off projects
Fiverr VA for data entry
Fancy Hands for administrative tasks
You just added capacity without adding fixed costs.
Tier 5: Hire Part-Time or Fractional
Can you hire someone for 10 hours/week instead of 40?
Examples:
Fractional CFO (instead of full-time finance hire)
Part-time content writer (instead of full-time marketer)
Contractor developer for a specific feature (instead of full-time engineer)
You just added capacity at 25% the cost.
Tier 6: Hire Full-Time (Last Resort)
Only after you've exhausted Tiers 1-5 should you hire a full-time employee.
Why?
Because full-time hires are the most expensive, least flexible form of capacity.
"Hiring without hiring" means climbing this ladder slowly and stopping as soon as you solve the bottleneck.
Why This Matters for Microteams
Big companies hire first, optimize later. They can afford it.
Microteams can't.
For microteams, every hire has massive consequences:
Consequence #1: Payroll Is Your Biggest Fixed Cost
A $60K/year employee costs ~$75K/year (salary + benefits + taxes + overhead).
That's $6,250/month in fixed costs that don't go away if revenue drops.
Automation costs $100/month. Contractors cost $0 when you're not using them.
Fixed costs kill startups. Variable costs give you flexibility.
Consequence #2: Coordination Costs Scale with Headcount
The more people you add, the more time you spend in meetings, syncing, managing, and aligning.
Brooks's Law: "Adding people to a late project makes it later."
Why? Because onboarding, training, and coordination slow you down in the short term.
Consequence #3: Hiring Is Slow and Risky
From job post to productive employee: 2-4 months.
Meanwhile, you could automate the task in 2 days.
And there's no guarantee the hire works out. 30-50% of hires fail in the first year.
Consequence #4: You Lose Agility
With 3 people, you can pivot in a week.
With 15 people, pivoting takes months (and layoffs).
Lean teams move faster. "Hiring without hiring" keeps you lean.
The "Hiring Without Hiring" Framework
Here's how to scale capacity without scaling headcount: