I Hired Too Fast—And It Nearly Broke My Business

There’s this moment early in every SaaS founder’s journey when things start to feel real.

The MVP is live. A few customers are paying. Maybe you’ve just closed a pre-seed or seed round. The product’s still buggy, but the vision is intact. And suddenly you feel this massive pressure—internal or external—to scale.

That was me.

I had just raised our first round of funding. We had five paying customers and a product I was proud of (ish). The feedback was promising, the opportunity exciting. And I thought, now’s the time to build the team that will take us to the next level.

What I didn’t realize was—I was building a team for a company we weren’t yet.

“Let’s move fast, we’ve got the capital”

With some cash in the bank, I went straight into hiring mode.

I added engineers to “move faster on the roadmap.”

I brought on a marketing lead to “start building the brand.”

I hired a customer success manager to “support the influx of customers we didn’t yet have.”

On paper, it looked impressive. We went from three people to almost twenty in less than six months.

We had Slack channels. Notion dashboards. Weekly standups. Company updates. A proper org chart.

It felt like we were becoming a real company.

But underneath, cracks were already forming.

The truth no one talks about

Here’s what really happened behind the scenes:

• We had no proper onboarding process, so new hires spent weeks figuring out what they were even supposed to be doing.
  

• I was still writing specs for features I hadn’t validated with users—because I didn’t trust anyone else to make product decisions.
  

• Communication turned into a game of broken telephone. Too many people, too many opinions, not enough clarity.
  

• The “marketing lead” was waiting on “product marketing assets” that didn’t exist.
  

• Our engineering team started building for edge cases because we were listening to whoever shouted the loudest on Intercom.
  

• I was drowning in 1:1s, trying to keep everyone motivated and aligned, while secretly feeling like a fraud who had no idea what he was doing.

One day I looked at our Asana board, then our P&L—and it hit me:

We were incredibly busy, but not productive.

Our monthly burn had tripled. MRR barely moved. And team morale was shaky because no one felt they were making an impact.

That was the moment I knew I’d made a mistake.

“You’re funding inefficiency”

The wake-up call came during a check-in with our head of product (who, to this day, remains one of the smartest people I’ve worked with). We had just reviewed a feature that had taken four weeks to build and was used by exactly three customers.

She looked at me and said:

“You know we’re building infrastructure for a company we haven’t become yet, right? You’re funding inefficiency.”

That sentence haunted me.

Because she was right.

I was so caught up in looking like we were growing that I stopped asking whether we were actually making progress. I confused headcount with momentum. And I thought building a bigger team would somehow unlock faster growth.

Instead, it nearly broke everything.

The hard reset

A week later, I sat down with my co-founder and laid it out. We were burning too fast. We didn’t have clarity on who was driving real value. Our systems weren’t ready to support the size of team we had.

We needed to pause. Reflect. And rebuild.

We did a painful but necessary reset.

Some roles were let go. Others were re-scoped. I personally took over customer support for three months to understand what people really needed. We tightened the roadmap. Cut features that weren’t aligned with core customer problems. And we rebuilt our internal processes from the ground up—this time, starting with simplicity.

It wasn’t fun. In fact, it was one of the most emotionally difficult stretches of my career.

But it forced me to mature as a leader.

Lessons I now live by

If you’re in a similar place—or about to scale—let me offer this:

1. Hire slow. Really slow.
   Only bring someone on when you can clearly define what they’ll own, how they’ll be measured, and how success directly connects to business outcomes.
   

2. Systems before headcount.
   If you haven’t documented how something gets done today, don’t assume someone else can just “take it over.”
   

3. More people = more complexity.
   Every new hire increases communication overhead. If you’re not ready to handle that, it doesn’t matter how talented they are—they’ll struggle.
   

4. Don’t hire for optics.
   No investor wants to see a bloated team without traction. And no founder should feel pressured to grow headcount just to “look like a real startup.”

Know the burn, deeply.
Watch your cash flow like a hawk. Growth solves a lot of problems—but only if you survive long enough to see it.

What changed after

The team is leaner now—but far more effective. Everyone knows why they’re here. Everyone talks to customers. Everyone ships value.

We’ve doubled MRR in the past 6 months with half the team size we had during our “hiring spree.”

And more importantly—I sleep better at night.

Because we’re not just building a product anymore.

We’re building a real business.

If you’re a founder in the middle of your first scale-up phase, I’d love to hear how you’re handling team growth.

Reply and tell me—what’s been your hardest hiring lesson so far?

Until next time,
Angelo