In partnership with
Hey guys! This week we're tackling one of our favourite topics: hiring
Most founders think hiring is like turning on a faucet - the more you need to grow, the more you recruit. But this constant-hiring approach can actually hurt your culture, dilute your team quality, and burn through cash without clear returns.
After speaking with Jürgen Mayerhofer from enspired, we discovered there may be another approach to team building that most growth-stage founders miss - and it might solve the hiring headaches that plague so many founders.
enspired is an AI-powered energy trading platform that helps optimize flexible energy assets like battery storage. With €25.5M raised and 80 employees across 6 countries, they've scaled from 12 to 80 people while maintaining exceptional team performance and culture.
Jürgen's experience challenges the conventional wisdom about hiring. Instead of recruiting continuously, enspired hires in planned bursts tied to funding rounds and strategic milestones.
Their counterintuitive discovery: sometimes the best way to build a great team is to stop hiring and focus on integration.
Inventory Software Made Easy—Now $499 Off
Looking for inventory software that’s actually easy to use?
inFlow helps you manage inventory, orders, and shipping—without the hassle.
It includes built-in barcode scanning and connects with Shopify, Amazon, QuickBooks, and more.
Try it free and save $499 with code EASY499—for a limited time.
🚀 Compare plans on our pricing page
Thank you for supporting our sponsors, who help keep this newsletter free
What’s wrong with hiring all the time?
Continuous hiring has become the default for most scaling startups. The logic seems sound: you're growing fast, you need more people, so you should always be recruiting.
Many founders treat hiring like a background process that should never stop.
But what happens when your business doesn't fit this always-on recruiting model? What if you're building complex technology that requires deep coordination, or developing products where team chemistry actually matters for performance?
Why enspired initially considered continuous hiring
During their growth phases, enspired faced the typical scaling pressures:
Rapid product development: Complex AI systems needed more engineering talent
Market expansion: New geographies required local expertise and sales support
Investor expectations: Growth-stage investors expected headcount scaling with funding
Competitive pressure: Energy tech rivals were hiring aggressively
"We have a very strong focus on finding smart people with the right cultural fit... how many people can you actually find with the relevant experience?"
This realization led them to question whether constant recruitment was actually the right approach for their business. When you're building algorithmic grid-scale battery storage optimization in Europe, the talent pool with direct experience is virtually non-existent.
The problems with always-hiring:
Culture dilution: New hires couldn't absorb company values before more people joined
Integration overload: Existing team spent too much time onboarding instead of executing
Quality compromise: Pressure to fill roles led to settling for "good enough" candidates
Resource drain: Continuous recruiting consumed management bandwidth without clear ROI
Reactive hiring: Constantly filling urgent needs instead of building toward strategic goals
Jürgen learned that for complex, technical businesses, hiring quality matters more than hiring speed:
"How many people can you actually find with the relevant experience?"
Inventory Software Made Easy—Now $499 Off
Looking for inventory software that’s actually easy to use?
inFlow helps you manage inventory, orders, and shipping—without the hassle.
It includes built-in barcode scanning to facilitate picking, packing, and stock counts. inFlow also integrates seamlessly with Shopify, Amazon, QuickBooks, UPS, and over 90 other apps you already use
93% of users say inFlow is easy to use—and now you can see for yourself.
Try it free and for a limited time, save $499 with code EASY499 when you upgrade.
Free up hours each week—so you can focus more on growing your business.
✅ Hear from real users in our case studies
🚀 Compare plans on our pricing page
The Phased Hiring Strategy
Instead of continuous recruitment, enspired developed a "phased hiring" approach: planned periods of intensive recruiting followed by integration phases where they focus on team development and execution.
"We typically start recruiting as soon as we have term sheets because it takes time, and you don't want to spend 6 months hiring after your funding round is formally closed"
The strategic advantage of planned hiring cycles
Burst hiring forces you to think strategically about your team composition rather than reactively filling immediate needs. This approach creates several compounding benefits:
Forces proper planning: You must map out exactly which roles will drive your next phase of growth
Reduces hiring chaos: Clear recruitment windows prevent constant disruption to existing team productivity
Enables cultural control: Integration phases allow new cohorts to absorb company values without continuous dilution
Improves hiring quality: Planned timelines mean you can hold higher standards instead of settling for available candidates
enspired takes this planning extremely seriously:
"At least a year before every financing round or bigger growth step, we work even with external consultants... We don't want to do consistent growth because you always have to onboard people that causes stress in the group."
How this works for enspired:
Planning Phase (12+ months before funding):
Design organizational structure (either with executive committee or external advisors / consultants)
Map out exact roles needed for next 12-18 months based on strategic roadmap
Define cultural fit criteria using their "Spice" model to systematically describe what they're looking for
Create detailed hiring timeline aligned with funding and business milestones
Hiring Burst (3-4 months):
Start recruiting as soon as term sheets are signed
Intensive recruitment for all planned positions simultaneously with consistent cultural standards
Focus entirely on bringing the right people on board
Complete onboarding for entire cohort at once to create peer learning groups
Integration Phase (6+ months):
Stop external recruiting entirely to focus on team development
Reinforce cultural alignment and build working relationships within new team composition
Execute on roadmap with stable team structure and clear role definitions
This systematic approach allowed enspired to achieve remarkable growth:
"After Series A, we grew from 15 people to 50 within a short amount of time... With Series B, we grew from 50 to 80 within three to four months."
Influencer code protection made simple
KeepCart: Coupon Protection partners with D2C brands like Quince, Blueland, Vessi and more to stop/monitor coupon leaks to sites/extensions like Honey, CapitalOne, RetailMeNot, and more to boost your DTC margins
Why Phased Hiring Works for Scale-ups
enspired's success with burst hiring wasn't accidental - it aligned perfectly with the realities of building complex, technical products:
1. Culture Development Takes Time When you're building a complex business, team coordination isn't optional. New hires need time to absorb company values, understand technical architecture, and develop working relationships.
2. Technical Onboarding is Intensive: Complex products require significant knowledge transfer. Having multiple new hires start simultaneously means you can batch training and create peer learning cohorts.
3. Management Bandwidth is Limited "Expanding in controlled bursts rather than continuous hiring allows for better integration and team performance."
Hiring well requires significant time investment from senior team members. Burst hiring concentrates this effort instead of spreading it continuously.
4. Quality Control is Easier When you're hiring 10-30 people over 3 months instead of 1-2 people every month, you can maintain higher standards and avoid "settling" due to urgency.
5. Strategic Planning Becomes Mandatory Burst hiring forces you to think 12-18 months ahead about team composition, preventing reactive hiring decisions that don't align with long-term goals.
What this means for you
If you're scaling a complex business, here's Jürgen's framework for burst hiring:
Plan your hiring cycles around funding and milestones - Start recruiting 2-3 months before you actually need people. Map out exact roles for the next 12-18 months and work with external consultants to design your organizational structure.
Batch onboarding for better integration - Having multiple people start simultaneously creates peer learning opportunities and reduces individual management overhead.
Focus on cultural fit during hiring bursts - Develop systematic frameworks (like enspired's "Spice" model) to identify cultural alignment. Use your integration phases to reinforce values and team dynamics without the distraction of constant new faces.
The brutal truth: if you can't integrate new hires effectively, hiring more people faster won't solve your scaling problems.
Remember Jürgen's philosophy:
"We rather say go from two to nine now. Within four months, you have a ton of stress, but after six months, you will have a high-performance team... You cannot focus on execution if you're constantly busy with your team as a leader."
🤝 Useful links
If you enjoyed this issue, please share it with fellow founders, operators, & investors and fill out our feedback form below:
See you next week!
Rahul & Aryaman
