Dan Counsell
Nov 6, 2017
When you say you run your own company, people inevitably end up asking how many staff you have. The higher the number, the more impressed people seem to be. I totally get it. I fell into the trap of thinking this way, bigger must be better.
I really thought for Realmac Software to be classed as a successful company, I needed to keep growing the business. Get a bigger office, and hire more people. The company was doing well, so I just went with it.
It’s really hard to grow an independent company, especially a software business. I didn’t go to business school, and didn’t really think about what managers could §bring to a business, so everyone I hired was on the same level: designers, developers, support. We were just one big team. But this is where things started to break down.
It was easy when we were a small team of around five, but as we grew past ten full-time staff, along with a raft of freelancers, things began to unravel. The pressure shifted. It was no longer just about building great products, but about making sure we could cover everyone’s salaries. At our peak, our monthly outgoings reached around £50,000. For a small independent company, that was a heavy weight to carry.
The more staff you have, the more politics there are, and not everyone is going to get along like they did when the company was small. I remember going to the pub with everyone and we could no longer all fit around the same table. Splinter groups started to emerge. It felt really unsettling. We used to be a close-knit team, all pulling in the same direction.
Everyone was essentially reporting to me. We were building a dozen apps and I was responsible for all of them and the teams building them. It was a lot, especially when I wanted our software to be the best in the world. Something had to give.
Life has a way of surprising you, and thankfully I didn’t have to force a change. As with all businesses, people decide to leave. In our case, a lot of our staff got pinched by Silicon Valley companies that we just couldn’t ever compete with. So when people left, I just didn’t hire replacements. The company started to organically shrink. We downsized offices, and eventually went fully remote.
Today, I work from home with a small remote team of talented developers who I’ve worked with for many years. It’s so much more enjoyable. We’re now optimising for happiness and revenue, not growth for the sake of growth.
That experience taught me a lot. I'm not saying don't hire people or don't get an office, just think carefully before you do. Ask yourself the questions I wish I'd asked earlier: can I still manage everyone directly? Will this hire generate enough revenue to cover their cost and then some? Am I hiring because I need to, or because it feels like what a "real" company does?
Think about where you actually want to end up, and whether the overheads and everything else that a bigger business brings are really worth it.