Transcript excerpt of Jason M. Lemkin describing a hiring and growth strategy: spend ~80% of revenue on people while letting headcount grow more slowly than revenue to improve efficiency. He cites HubSpot as an example — revenues +30% while headcount +10% — and recommends hiring the best candidates incrementally to scale efficiently.
Revenue up 30%; headcount up 10%.
Said, listen, for every, you know, dollar we bring in, we can spend 80% on people. That's what we did. So we didn't stop hiring. Pause. Hire didn't even do layoffs or anything. We just grew headcount a little bit more slowly than revenue. And that meant every month, we might have one new hire to make. And then as we grew a little bit more, it was two. And we just decided for our organization, at this size of this scale, who's the best one? Wreck we should put on who's the best one, hire the best two, the best three. And, you know, at a macro level, that's what HubSpot's doing. Revenues up 30%, headcounts up 10%. Do that math, and you will scale efficient efficiently, no matter. No matter what else happens.
