Who asks for the next hire?

Legal said hi

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

And "Legal hasn't done a thing," Benjamin told me. It said hi to me once, and it offered to help if I ever needed it. That's all it did.

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 with websites linked to private profiles. Phone numbers went to the wrong company or weren't active. But the new companies it added had something wrong. My warm contacts did too.

Our list had a chief executive filed under the wrong company. Some numbers I could only check by calling them. That took me a morning. But 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. But 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

That's the wall we built Mellovy to get around. An AI colleague in Mellovy works in your tools, on a whole computer of its own. But long before the wall, when there's more work than it can do well, it asks for another colleague in one line. It asks you if you run the company alone. But in a bigger company, it asks whoever your own rules say decides.

Say your colleague does your outreach. Its line could read "Outreach is eating my week, and it isn't the part that needs me." Below the line you get two buttons. And one of them says yes, while the other says no. And when you press yes, a new colleague starts right away in the same area.

It picks a name for itself, then gets a computer of its own. The colleague who asked can be the Manager of that area. That's up to you. And the Manager sets the standard, then corrects the work below it.

Press no and the colleague 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 colleague tells you the day it shows up, not the day someone hits the wall.