Hiring

When does a founder stop being the whole company?

1. 01Aurygine synthesisEvidence quality: high

   The first hire: buying back the constraint, not the discomfort

   Aurygine's own synthesis across observed practice. No single work is reproduced.

   Extracted pattern

   • Hire against the constraint that is provably costing revenue, not against the task you enjoy least.
   • A hire is a recurring cost with a notice period — price it as twelve months, not one.
   • If the work has never been written down, it cannot be delegated yet.

   Decision pattern

   • Situation. The founder is overloaded and considering a first hire.
     Move. Log two weeks of work, identify the activity blocking revenue, document it, then hire narrowly against that.
     Trade-off. Two weeks of delay while the constraint is proven.
     Breaks when. Demand is collapsing — then the answer is not a hire at any speed.

   Practical implication

   Prove the constraint before you pay for it. Write the role from two weeks of real logged work, and check the company still has cover if the hire takes three months to pay back.

   Counter-pattern / contradiction

   • Venture-funded teams hiring ahead of demand is a deliberate, funded bet — not a template for a bootstrapped company.

   Failure modes

   • Hiring a generalist to absorb undefined work.
   • Committing to salary from a single large contract that has not been renewed.

   What was measured

   revenue per founder hour · work turned down · cash cover in months after the hire

   Stage relevance

   First customers · Traction

   Source

   Aurygine · 2026-03-20
2. 02Aurygine synthesisEvidence quality: high

   Utilisation and price: the two levers a service business actually has

   Aurygine's own synthesis across observed practice. No single work is reproduced.

   Extracted pattern

   • A service business grows through sold hours and price per hour. Everything else is downstream of those two.
   • Raising price on new customers only is the lowest-risk experiment available.
   • Unsold capacity is a cost that never appears on an invoice.

   Decision pattern

   • Situation. Revenue is flat and the founder is already working full weeks.
     Move. Measure utilisation honestly, then raise price for new work by 10–15% and hold it for one quarter.
     Trade-off. Some prospects are lost; the ones lost were usually the least profitable.
     Breaks when. Utilisation is low because demand is weak — then the problem is acquisition, and a price rise makes it worse.

   Practical implication

   Check utilisation before you check marketing. High utilisation and flat revenue is a pricing problem; low utilisation is a demand problem. They need opposite moves.

   Counter-pattern / contradiction

   • Software businesses have near-zero marginal delivery cost, so utilisation thinking misleads them.

   Failure modes

   • Adding staff before price has been tested.
   • Counting booked hours instead of paid hours.

   What was measured

   utilisation % · average price per engagement · repeat rate · days to payment

   Stage relevance

   First customers · Traction · Mature

   Source

   Aurygine · 2026-03-05