🧞‍♂️ New to Exponential Scale? Each week, I provide tools, tips, and tricks for tiny teams with big ambitions that want to scale big. For more: Exponential Scale Podcast | Scalebrate | Scalebrate Hub
Founding Supporters: Support the following people and companies because they supported us from the beginning: DataEI | Dr. Bob Schatz | .Tech Domains | Fairman Studios | Jean-Philippe Martin | RocketSmart AI | UMBC
Latest Podcasts: What You Missed
Million-Dollar Solo-Founder Hardware Product: Interview with Scott Heimendinger, Founder & CEO, Seattle Ultrasonics - For 5 years, a solo founder developed a category-creating hardware product in stealth — then launched a $399 ultrasonic knife at CES 2026 with just $2 million in pre-seed funding.
$6M+ ARR with All Agents and 1 Employee - Interview with Ben Broca, Founder of Polsia - One person. $6M+ in annual recurring revenue. Nearly five thousand businesses running autonomously — while he sleeps. That's Ben Broca's company right now, Polsia (yes, that’s AI Slop backwards)
The Chill Work Manifesto: Interview with Rand Fishkin, Co-founder & CEO of SparkToro - Rand Fishkin raised $29M in VC at Moz, watched it grow to 200+ employees — and then deliberately built his next company to run on 2.5 people with tens of thousands of customers.
The Book That Replaced the Sales Team: Interview with Gia Laudi, Customer-Led - A 4-person team with no sales department counts Bitly, Sprout Social, and dbt Labs as clients, because a book replaced the sales motion entirely.
No-Code as Leverage - Interview with Emmanuel Straschnov, CEO & Co-Founder of Bubble. - Emmanuel bootstrapped Bubble for seven years without a dollar of outside capital. Today, companies built on Bubble have generated over $1 billion in revenue in 2025 alone.
Revenue-Per-Person Metrics: The True Scaling Indicator
You hire your first employee. Revenue goes up. You hire another. Revenue goes up again.
So you keep hiring. Five people. Then ten. Then fifteen.
But one day, you look at your P&L and realize: you're making the same profit as when you had five people. You've tripled headcount, but you haven't tripled results.
What went wrong?
You optimized for growth, not leverage. You measured headcount, not productivity. You built a bigger team—but not a more efficient one.
The companies that scale smart don't ask, "How many people do we have?" They ask, "How much revenue does each person generate?"
That's Revenue Per Person (RPP). And it's the most underrated scaling metric.
The $2M Company with a $200K Problem
Let me tell you about Marcus, founder of a 12-person software consulting firm.
Marcus's business was growing. Year one: $800K revenue, 4 people. Year two: $1.5M revenue, 8 people. Year three: $2M revenue, 12 people.
On the surface, that looked great. Revenue was up 150% over three years.
But Marcus felt stuck. He was working harder than ever. Payroll was ballooning. And profit margins were shrinking.
So Marcus did the math:
Revenue Per Person (RPP):
Year 1: $800K Ă· 4 = $200K per person
Year 2: $1.5M Ă· 8 = $187K per person
Year 3: $2M Ă· 12 = $167K per person
Revenue was growing. But efficiency was declining.
Each new hire was generating less revenue than the last. Marcus was scaling up, but he wasn't scaling smart.
Think of it like adding more engines to a plane. More engines = more power, right?
Not if each new engine adds weight, complexity, and drag. At some point, you're burning more fuel than you're gaining in speed.
Marcus had hit that point. He was hiring to solve problems—but each hire created new overhead, communication costs, and management burden.
He needed to flip the equation: instead of adding people to grow revenue, he needed to grow revenue per person.
Marcus set a new goal: increase RPP from $167K to $250K within 12 months—without cutting headcount.
Here's what happened:
12 months later:
Revenue: $3M (up 50%)
Headcount: 12 (same)
RPP: $250K per person (up 50%)
Profit margins doubled. Marcus worked less. The team was more focused.
How? He didn't hire faster. He scaled smarter.
What Is Revenue Per Person (RPP)?
Revenue Per Person = Total Revenue Ă· Total Headcount
It's the simplest, most revealing metric for operational efficiency.
High RPP = Leverage. Your team is productive, processes are efficient, and you're not over-hiring.
Low RPP = Bloat. You're paying people to do work that doesn't directly drive revenue.
Why RPP matters for microteams:
Every hire is expensive. Salary + benefits + taxes + overhead = 1.4x salary. A $60K hire actually costs you $84K.
Coordination costs scale non-linearly. Two people = 1 connection. Five people = 10 connections. Ten people = 45 connections. More people = exponentially more communication overhead.
Not all work drives revenue. Admin, internal meetings, "process improvement" tasks—these can consume 30-50% of a team's time if you're not careful.
RPP forces you to ask: "Is this person generating more value than they cost?"
Why This Matters for Microteams
Big companies can afford inefficiency. Google, Microsoft, Facebook—they have RPP in the $1M-2M range because they're printing money.
Microteams? Your RPP might be $100K-300K. And that's fine—as long as it's going up, not down.
Here's why tracking RPP is critical:
It reveals productivity trends. If RPP is declining as you grow, you're scaling inefficiently.
It prevents premature hiring. Before adding headcount, ask: "Could we hit this revenue target by improving RPP instead?"
It highlights automation opportunities. If one person is doing $500K in revenue, what are they doing that others aren't? Can you replicate it?
It keeps you lean. The goal isn't to build a big company—it's to build a profitable one.
The best microteams have RPP 2x-3x higher than their competitors. They're not working harder—they're working with more leverage.
The RPP Optimization Framework
Here's how to measure, track, and improve your Revenue Per Person.