[tomnipotent]

> by other factors e.g. competition

The very nature of exogenous factors is that we can only react to/worry about them.

When all is said and done, my board is going to ask me what I did "about it" which is an implicit invitation for me to explain why they should be confident in how I'm spending their money. If the numbers don't look good or good enough, I need to tell them what I'm doing to change that. That manifests as some slides in a board deck explaining projects, impacts, deadlines, and headcount. Maybe an org chart. Financial projections.

One investor will ask me if I really need those people. Another will ask how adding those people will affect the delivery schedule. Another will ask if there are any projects we're currently working on that we're maybe not excited about (or they're not) and if we could cut our losses.

Unless our runway is really low and we're uncertain in our confidence to raise another round, the general consensus will be to hire more people and not impact existing projects. Maybe you went expecting to hire 20, but "negotiated" down to 10. Sometimes you go in expecting to hire 20, and the board convinces you to hire 40.