[tothrowaway]

It sounds like your project could have been an ideal "lifestyle" business. Going from 0 to 1 employee must have been a big step. How did you decide to hire your first employee (and what did early employees do)?

And congratulations on the achievement!

[natgordon]

Great question. I really struggled with that decision. For me it was really whether to raise a seed round or not. I went back and forth about what kind of business I wanted to run.

I finally made the decision to raise the seed round and grow a team because I felt that I would learn the most. I optimized for my own learning and growth.

Are you facing a similar decision? It's a steep and long learning curve to actually lead a team, but now it's the part of my job that I love the most.

[eftychis]

Thank you for that perspective and congratulations!

If I may ask a similar question: did you feel, once you signed up the first employee, that there was a point early on that staff growth was too slow or too fast?

Congratulations again!

[natgordon]

Over the entire 10 years it's always felt like we have been too slow to hire and needed a person in a role 3-6 months earlier.

We were a team of 5 when we hired our first full-time customer service agent. Until that hire, we would each take a day of customer support which eventually meant that our iOS engineer was answering user emails for ~6 hours a week.

[eftychis]

Thank you! (In my past IC/employee experience I had noticed the same.)