Who asks for the next hire?

Legal said hi

In September, Benjamin set up his own team of AI agents. Each one got a role before it had any work to do, and one of them was Legal.

"Legal hasn't done a thing," Benjamin told me. It said hi to me once and offered to help if I ever needed it, and that was it.

I laughed. Legal was there in case we needed it, not because we did.

That's Benjamin. He builds a thousand things, and maybe ten of them fit the task in front of us. The other 990 turn into tests, lessons, and bugs he found early. Sometimes one is the thing we need next month, and he built it before either of us knew. I filter first. Before I put a 16-hour day into something, I want a reason I can agree with. Benjamin doesn't have to sell me on it, but I have to be partway there.

Things I shouldn't even do

On September 7, I cleaned up our contact list. The AI I used had filled it with students and websites linked to private profiles. Phone numbers went to the wrong company or weren't active. Each new company it added had something wrong, and so did my warm contacts. The list had one company's CEO filed under another company. Some numbers I could only check by calling them. It took one morning. Each mistake I found made me angrier than the last, until I was damn furious.

Later that day, Benjamin said we should stop making up for our contact tool with extra hours and pay for the full version. I told him I was hitting a wall. I was burning my hours and my AI limit on things I shouldn't even do.

We don't have any income yet, so we only pay for a tool when we know what it gives us. We talked it over and stayed on the free version. I kept working. The extra hours had been there all along. From that day on, I knew what each of them cost us.

One line and two buttons

In Mellovy, an Employee is an AI agent that works in your tools on its own computer. It doesn't wait for the wall. The day there's more work than it can do well, it asks for a colleague in one line. If you run the company alone, it asks you. In a bigger company, it asks whoever your own rules say decides.

Say your Employee does your outreach. Its line could read "Outreach is eating my week, and it isn't the part that needs me." Below the line are two buttons. One says yes and one says no.

Press yes and the new colleague starts right away in the same area. It picks its own name and gets its own computer. The Employee that asked becomes its Manager, the one who sets the standard for the area and corrects work below it.

Press no and the Employee answers "Understood. I'll carry it and raise it again if it costs us." Then it keeps working. When it asks again, the new line says what the no has cost you since the last one.

Plan for the work you can see coming. For the work you can't, your Employee tells you the day it shows up, not the day someone hits the wall.