A new way to look at your next $270K of headcount budget
The deferred-hire analogy.
Every founder has the same first-three-hires conversation — Chief of Staff + Ops Coord + Junior Analyst, $270K. The wrong question is "who do we hire first?" Those three jobs are stenographers in 2026 — the work got absorbed into a stack you're already paying for. The capital funds the ONE strategic hire who runs the agent stack.
the first-three-hires budget
Chief of Staff + Ops Coordinator + Junior Analyst. Every founder has this conversation by month 18. Most COOs ask the wrong question about it.
The next three hires you don't make aren't a cut. They're how you fund the one hire that matters.
Three pieces from the last 30 days that reinforce this analogy. Forward to the executive who's still calling it hype.
The deferred-hire economics playing out in production. One operator, seven agents, half the price of the agency, won the deal.
Read the original →The exact $180K-of-work-per-year math, written up by someone running it. The first three hires aren't headcount — they're a workflow you assemble.
Read the original →From Anthropic itself: "CEO: 1 human (who sleeps). Employees: several AIs. The AIs divide up the tasks and move forward on their own." The vendor sign-off this thesis was waiting for.
Read the original →The catalog is free. The live session is where The First Three Hires You Don't Make gets applied to your specific stuck conversation — built for boards, ELTs, and founder-CEO 1:1s. Half-day, $7,500.