Jason M. Lemkin says hiring freezes forced companies to grow 50% without adding staff, hitting historic highs in sales and marketing efficiency. Startups stretched venture rounds and learned to do more with fewer people in 2024's tough market.
2024
Growing ~50% over two years while headcount stayed flat (i.e., not hiring the additional 50% of people).
Everyone got so efficient, they got so fit, and they cut all marketing spend and they froze hiring. Right? There was a lot of PR about layoffs, but layoffs are a much smaller story than just freezing hiring. Freezing hiring for two years is essentially sort of like a layoff, right? If you grow 50% in over two years and headcount's flat, then you basically didn't hire that extra 50% of people. And so what happened was this weird world where sales and marketing efficiency cat were at the lowest tax, are at the highest they've been in my lifetime as a founder that we know of. We're in a tough world in 2024, which is we all got fit, we all got efficient. We all, we all made those venture rounds stretch, right? If they're not going under, they. They figured out how to at least grow a little bit with half the head count.
