CEO waits until employees are ‘dying' for help before hiring: ‘I want company to be dehydrated'

Hindustan Times

22-04-2025

An AI startup CEO suggested an unusual way of keeping his team efficient, comparing it to a "dehydrated" entity and using hiring as drops of water to help it feel reinvigorated.
Varun Mohan, the co-founder and CEO of AI startup Windsurf, says that he wants to keep his company lean and use a small team to fulfill their goals till the members are 'dying' for more help.
Mohan's belief is hiring should only happen when "everyone's just almost raising their hands and saying, 'I'm dying, we need one more person."
Speaking on an episode of Lenny's Podcast, that features product leaders and experts, Mohan equated his ideal company to a "dehydrated entity".
"I want the company to almost be like this dehydrated entity. Every hire is like a little bit of water, and we only go back and hire someone when we're back to being dehydrated. The goal isn't to idolise small teams for the sake of it. It's to be the smallest company we can be to satisfy our ambitions," he said
According to Business Insider, investors are now focusing on revenue per employee after several tech companies grew rapidly during the pandemic. If the level of output can be maintained, it is preferred to maintain a smaller team.
"If we can crack actually being a fairly sizable company but still operate as if we're a startup, that's the dream," he said, adding that keeping a small team also helps stay away from "weird politics".
Currently, Windsurf has 170 employees and has over 30 open roles listed on its website, which include software engineers and recruiters.
Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, is a Silicon Valley startup building AI tools that let developers write code using natural language prompts, a trend dubbed "vibe coding" by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy.
Founded in 2021, Windsurf has raised over $200 million and was valued at $1.25 billion.
After excerpts from the podcast were shared on social media, many users were surprised by Varun Mohan's approach to team building, several of them warned of quick burnout due to it.
"This causes burnout in your best employees. Not great advice. The problem is that most of the corporate sector follows this advice only. Remote work makes it worse, as no one can see signs of burnout," said one of them.
Another accused him of not being good at hiring. "A good CEO or manager would figure it out long before the drowning phase. It's silly virtue signaling that will lead to a tired team unable to work properly. Also, if you're not good at hiring it's just an excuse to be lame and not hire," they said.