Growth After Headcount

About Growth After Headcount

Growth After Headcount explores how AI can help businesses grow while creating more room for people to think, build and live. Each episode brings a conversation with founders building AI-native businesses and leaders transforming established companies. How are they rethinking the work? What can run autonomously, and where do people make the difference? Honest lessons from those putting these ideas into practice—the progress, the setbacks and the possibilities. I’m Haris Odobasic, Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum). Alongside these conversations, I share what I’m learning on my own journey building an AI-native business. Connect with me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) or X (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

Publisher

Haris Odobasic

Category

business · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

21 Jul 2026

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

13 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   Rethinking Go-to-Market with AI — Jonathan Kvarfordt #012

   Jonathan Kvarfordt has seen companies hand out AI licenses and call it transformation. The tools arrive, but the buying process stays much the same. Customers still wait for answers, and teams still work around disconnected systems. For Jonathan, the opportunity starts with rethinking how the work gets done. Real AI adoption depends on leaders giving people room to experiment and connecting the data they need. Drawing on his work at Momentum and his former role at 1mind, Jonathan explains how AI can answer buyers’ questions earlier and free people for work that needs their judgment. He also shares why buyers may speak more openly to AI, why trusted distribution matters as building gets easier, and how he uses AI without giving up his own thinking. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 02:21 — AI licenses don’t make a transformation 05:54 — Disconnected data and leadership hold AI back 08:14 — Putting AI between the tools you already use 09:48 — What 1mind’s AI sales experts can do 11:33 — Moving people to more valuable work 16:59 — Why buyers speak more openly to AI 19:28 — Revenue per agent and the buyer’s choice 21:04 — Distribution starts with earning trust 23:54 — Using AI to make room for thinking 27:35 — Thinking for yourself before asking AI 28:42 — Could AI agents scale your expertise? Guest Jonathan Kvarfordt, GTM AI Strategist. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmkmba/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmkmba/) GTM AI Podcast & Newsletter: https://www.gtmaipodcast.com/newsletters (https://www.gtmaipodcast.com/newsletters) 1mind, discussed from Jonathan’s former role: https://www.1mind.com/ (https://www.1mind.com/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

2. 

   8 Oct 2026

   From Stop Hiring Humans to Be More Human — Jaspar Carmichael-Jack (Artisan) #011

   Artisan's earlier Stop Hiring Humans campaign put the company on the map. But founder and CEO Jaspar Carmichael-Jack says the message didn't fit all its customers: enterprise sales teams were using Ava to help their existing people do more. Inside Artisan, he says the team is around 50 people, despite earlier plans to grow beyond 100. And some employees' AI token bills became large enough that hiring another person could have been cheaper. The practical question is which work AI can do reliably and at a sensible cost. Jaspar explains why Artisan stepped back from maximizing token use to focus on return on investment, why product judgment and knowledge of a customer's workflow still matter when building gets easier, and where human salespeople remain essential. He also describes the next step beyond outbound prospecting, with an AI account executive intended for smaller deals that would otherwise go straight to self-service. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:34 — Growing revenue faster than the team 01:57 — Automating the work that isn't uniquely human 02:27 — When AI costs more than another hire 04:20 — Why a good AI BDR takes more than emails 06:24 — An AI account executive for smaller deals 09:34 — Product judgment and brand still matter 10:43 — Why Stop Hiring Humans didn't fit every customer 12:10 — You can't skip understanding the workflow 14:01 — The plan to expand beyond outbound sales 16:16 — What AI can and can't fix in your data 19:14 — Automate carefully, hire well, iterate fast Guest Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Founder & CEO at Artisan. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaspar-carmichael-jack/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaspar-carmichael-jack/) Artisan: https://www.artisan.co/ (https://www.artisan.co/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

3. 

   1 Oct 2026

   Unicorn To €100M: More Per Rep, Not More Reps — Molo Lorenz (Moss) #010

   Moss just became a unicorn. The next target is €100M ARR, and the plan for getting there does not involve a hiring spree. Moritz "Molo" Lorenz runs GTM engineering at Moss, a four-person team inside RevOps that works across the ops, systems, and data teams. His job is to make every rep produce more, so revenue can grow much faster than headcount. This episode is about the order of operations. Moss swapped an intern team doing manual account research for automated enrichment. It built a data lake so Salesforce stays clean. It also tried automated outbound and AI SDRs before the data was ready, and that hurt its lead pool. Molo explains why data quality comes before agents, why token spend gets measured against SQLs, and why he thinks the end state is a custom interface outside the CRM that serves reps the next best action, not everyone querying AI from a terminal. Chapters 00:00 — Intro: where "Molo" comes from 01:16 — What a Director of GTM Engineering does at Moss 02:20 — Where GTM engineering sits inside RevOps 05:43 — €100M ARR without a hiring spree 11:18 — The intern team that automated enrichment replaced 14:25 — Data lake first, CRM second 17:15 — What agents do at Moss: waterfall enrichment and persona search 20:20 — Moving down the funnel: the data cube and dynamic account scoring 23:23 — What Moss tried too early: automated outbound and AI SDRs 25:14 — Token costs and the AI ops team 29:17 — Why the terminal is not the end state 31:51 — The road to €100M: conversion rate and an interface beyond Salesforce Guest Moritz "Molo" Lorenz, Director of GTM Engineering at Moss. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-molo-lorenz/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/moritz-molo-lorenz/) Moss: https://www.getmoss.com/ (https://www.getmoss.com/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

4. 

   24 Sept 2026

   Two People, $1.2M ARR, No Sales Team — Adam Holmgren (Fibbler) #009

   Adam Holmgren built Fibbler to $1.2M ARR with one co-founder and no sales team. He is not an engineer. He spent ten years in B2B marketing, started the company on the side of a full-time job, and now ships more product features than his technical co-founder does. His first fifty customers came from a LinkedIn audience he built two years before there was a product. The first employee is being hired now, and the target is $10M ARR with fewer than five people. His argument is that building stopped being the constraint. Around ten companies now do roughly what Fibbler does, and the features are not what separates them. Distribution is. That is why Fibbler put half of every month's MRR into ads before either founder took a salary. Adam also makes the case that marketers make the best founders right now, that domain expertise is the one thing AI will not hand you, and that a SOC 2 certification is how a two-person company gets taken seriously against competitors many times its size. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:18 — Two people, $1.2M ARR, and two years of building on the side 02:14 — Starting at 35 with a family beat starting at 25 03:24 — The MVP took a year. Today it would take two weeks 05:35 — Why a two-person team ships faster than the category leaders 07:48 — Product-led growth was not strategy, it was a calendar problem 09:31 — 600 signups a month, and why the first hire is commercial 11:29 — Everyone can build features. Not everyone can build a brand 12:45 — Half of every month's MRR went into ads from day one 15:35 — The first 50 customers came from an audience built before the product 20:26 — SOC 2 and ISO: how a small player beats a vibe-coded competitor 23:53 — $10M ARR with fewer than five people 26:29 — Salaries tied to MRR instead of commission Guest Adam Holmgren, Co-Founder and CEO at Fibbler. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-holmgren/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-holmgren/) Fibbler: https://www.fibbler.co (https://www.fibbler.co) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

5. 

   16 Sept 2026

   The 5 Tiers Of AI Vulnerability — Bram Kaashoek (Main Capital) #008

   Y Combinator's latest guidance to founders was blunt: AI has cut the cost of building software 10 to 100x, so clone an existing product and sell it for a tenth of the price. Bram Kaashoek is Partner and COO at Main Capital Partners, a PE firm with more than 50 enterprise software companies representing €12 billion in assets. His answer is not defensive. Cheaper code is real. It just isn't the game. The episode makes three arguments. First, the shift that matters is not cost but category: software is moving from a tool that helps a professional to a platform that executes the job, which unlocks budgets far beyond IT. Second, AI vulnerability is not evenly spread. Main scores its market in five tiers, from systems of record down to single-task tools, and only invests in the top three. Third, incumbents sit on the one thing AI-native startups cannot build: years of customer and usage data. The hard part is not orchestration. It is getting that data out of the product, especially when the product still runs on-prem. Chapters 00:00 — The room where the Dutch cabinet used to meet 01:03 — YC's advice: clone it and sell it for a tenth 02:23 — From software as a tool to software that does the job 03:17 — Where the moat sits: trust, domain expertise, delivery 04:37 — Main's five tiers of AI vulnerability 06:18 — A competitor is 40% cheaper. Why don't customers switch? 07:59 — Fortes built a CRM in three to four months 10:20 — Enterprise deals are still sold by humans 13:21 — Headcount used to be the flex 16:12 — Revenue architecture: one data layer or nothing 18:02 — Incumbents have the data. Getting it out is the problem. 22:51 — What incumbents can learn from AI-native companies 24:23 — What AI-native companies can learn from incumbents 25:57 — ClickUp, 30-35% EBITDA, and do-more-with-the-same-team 28:06 — This is not an efficiency game: Pointsharp and WoodWing 31:33 — Five winning recipes for incumbents Guest Bram Kaashoek, Partner and COO at Main Capital Partners. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bramkaashoek/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bramkaashoek/) Main Capital Partners: https://main.nl/ (https://main.nl/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

6. 

   3 Sept 2026

   Building The 10x Accountant — Nick Knuppe (Neno) #007

   Traditional accounting firms run one accountant per 30 to 35 clients. Nick Knuppe is building toward one per 150. Neno is an AI-native financial services company that is both the software and the accounting firm: business bank accounts, expense cards, AR and AP, in-house accountants and tax fiscalists, and its own general ledger. In August 2026, Neno announced a €6.6 million seed round led by AlleyCorp, with Motive Partners and Firstminute Capital. Seven months after commercial launch, Nick says they onboard a customer a day, have passed 150 customers, and get more than 60 percent of new business from referrals. Three arguments carry the episode. Accounting software fees are heading to zero, so brand, service, and distribution decide who wins. Every hire has to pass one test: is this person so important that AI cannot do their job? And instead of OKRs, Neno runs four non-negotiable metrics, from ARR growth to customers per accountant. If they miss any of the four, the thesis is false. Neno's funding announcement (https://www.neno.co/resources/content/blog/neno-raises-%E2%82%AC6.6-million-to-build-ai-native-financial-services-for-europe-s-smes) Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:43 — The broken middle: 26 million SMEs, 220,000 firms on a 50-year-old model 02:25 — One accountant, 150 clients: breaking the industry ratio 04:29 — "Are you an AI company or an accounting firm?" 05:44 — Customers checking their accountant's work against Claude 07:44 — Expanding across tax codes: e-invoicing and API-led tax bodies 09:17 — Why Neno won't acquire legacy firms 10:47 — Trust at seven months old: referrals over marketing 13:05 — When software fees hit zero, brand decides 14:46 — Which billable-hours industries this playbook eats next 15:56 — The done-for-you end state: AI calls your late payers 17:06 — Non-negotiable metrics instead of OKRs Guest Nick Knuppe, Co-founder and CEO at Neno. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickknuppe/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickknuppe/) Neno: https://www.neno.co/ (https://www.neno.co/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

7. 

   26 Aug 2026

   There's A New Chasm Before The Chasm — Yannick Dillen (Vlerick) #006

   Yannick Dillen teaches entrepreneurship at Vlerick Business School and watches students kill good startup ideas over a 1,000 euro token bill. Meanwhile, Belgian scale-ups that fired their software engineers are quietly reposting the same vacancies. His argument: the zero-employee startup is not the cheap startup. Salary cost became token cost, and the pendulum between AI and software will settle in the middle. Three claims carry this episode. There is now an extra chasm before the innovators, because every market is flooded with lookalike vibe-coded products, and that is pushing B2B companies back to trade fairs and billboards. The "beautiful-weather entrepreneur" who sets up an AI company and waits on a terrace will fail the way 97% of dropshippers did. And the companies that win will be the ones that remove complexity, not the ones that add features. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:15 — Zero employees, not zero costs: the token bill that kills student startups 01:45 — Cheap wins: open-source models and how long corporate AI budgets last 04:16 — Belgium re-hires its fired engineers: the pendulum ends in the middle 06:44 — The rising water: which human peaks does AI submerge next? 08:04 — The beautiful-weather entrepreneur will not survive 10:46 — Swan's seven-day weeks, RB2B's seven months hands-off, and the dropshipping déjà vu 14:27 — Crossing the chasm at AI speed: the new pre-chasm before the innovators 17:45 — "It has never been that easy to build the wrong product" 20:10 — Does founder brand matter? The Marple Data counterexample 23:07 — The rise of analog: trade fairs, billboards, guerrilla marketing 27:34 — Complexity kills: the parting advice Guest Yannick Dillen, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Vlerick Business School. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannickdillen/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yannickdillen/) Vlerick: https://www.vlerick.com/en/find-faculty-and-experts/yannick-dillen/ (https://www.vlerick.com/en/find-faculty-and-experts/yannick-dillen/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

8. 

   18 Aug 2026

   AI in Go-To-Market: Building a Revenue System for 2026 — Jacco van der Kooij #005

   Jacco van der Kooij has spent over a decade telling SaaS companies how to build revenue systems. His read on AI is not that it makes teams faster. It's that AI revealed what was already broken. Companies never trained their people properly, and their marketing and sales systems were built not to talk to each other. The tools didn't cause the problem. They exposed it. The conversation runs from why the knowledge gap between buyer and seller has flipped, to why incumbents can't copy AI-native companies without rebuilding their data layer, to why the channels most GTM teams lean on for pipeline, SEO, cold email, and LinkedIn, are all losing their pull at once. Jacco argues for building systems over hiring people or buying more tools, makes the case that a real-time data system is the single most urgent thing a company can build, and pushes back on revenue per employee as a number that means one thing to a VC and something else to whoever has to run the business. Chapters 00:00 — Intro: what a revenue system is 00:31 — Why AI hits the whole customer journey, not one tool 01:01 — The knowledge gap flipped: buyers now outknow sellers 02:41 — From people-led to system-led 05:09 — Why incumbents can't just switch: data and mentality 06:14 — When coolness beats brand, and when brand wins back 07:23 — Trust isn't relationships, and three channels are collapsing 10:21 — The rise of analog: a magazine with a paper route 13:54 — AI didn't make you faster, it revealed you never trained your people 20:04 — The most urgent build: a real-time data system 23:57 — Revenue per employee: VC metric or operating one? 26:43 — What stays the same: customers, systems, data Guest Jacco van der Kooij, founder of Winning by Design. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaccovanderkooij/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaccovanderkooij/) Winning by Design: https://winningbydesign.com/ (https://winningbydesign.com/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AIinstead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

9. 

   12 Aug 2026

   $8.6M ARR, Nobody's Touched It In A Month — Adam Robinson (RB2B) #004

   Adam Robinson runs RB2B at $8.6M ARR. His CTO has not touched the code in over a month, he posts on LinkedIn three times a week about something else entirely, and the business keeps growing. He did not get there by wiring together the most sophisticated agents. He kept the product stupid simple, designed the whole thing from first principles so AI could handle the work a team used to, and priced it below what it costs anyone else to acquire a customer. The episode turns on one disagreement: what an autonomous business actually is. Adam's answer is a business built from the start to run itself, not a business with a pile of agents and three founders working around the clock. He lays out the three things that let RB2B outlast the copycats: awareness he creates for free through his own brand, a fixed-cost data asset that makes each new contact cost nothing, and a hard refusal to add features. He is also blunt about the ceiling. Churn is high, so he is not chasing $100M. He wants cash flow and a portfolio of sub-VC-scale bets, and his next one, MoltSets, sells contact data built for AI agents. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 01:00 — Why he built the audience before the product 03:00 — The Labor Day test: three posts that found the market 05:00 — Keep the product stupid simple so the AI runs support 08:21 — What an autonomous business actually is 10:56 — The data asset that costs nothing per new contact 15:19 — Contact data for AI agents: the next bet 18:30 — Can incumbents catch up? The 6sense problem 20:44 — Retention.com (http://Retention.com): six people to $13M ARR 23:11 — The one-person billion-dollar company Guest Adam Robinson, CEO & Co-founder of Retention.com (http://Retention.com), RB2B, and MoltSets. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/retentionadam/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/retentionadam/) Retention.com (http://Retention.com): https://retention.com/ (https://retention.com/) RB2B: https://rb2b.com/ (https://rb2b.com/) MoltSets: https://moltsets.com/ (https://moltsets.com/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

10. 

    30 Jul 2026

    CRO 2.0: $25M To $100M From The Terminal — Omar Ismail (Ascend) #003

    Ascend grew from zero to $25M ARR with no growth team. No growth marketer, no ads manager, no paid engine. Word of mouth, referrals, and a small set of partnerships. Then Omar Ismail joined as COO and built the entire go-to-market stack himself, orchestrated end to end in Claude Code. The target now: $100M ARR without meaningfully scaling headcount. Omar calls the second half of his job CRO 2.0: one person owning strategy and the machine that executes it. He argues the real trust problem with AI is not hallucination but software bugs in the systems it builds, which is why his next hire is a go-to-market engineer, not a marketer. And when everyone has the same tools, differentiation moves back to taste, judgment, and the things AI can't do at scale: physical mail, conferences, human relationships. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:35 — Banking, VC, and a music-tech exit before Ascend 03:08 — Zero to $25M ARR on word of mouth, now going AI native 03:46 — No growth team: one COO owns the whole go-to-market 07:18 — Claude Code as the orchestration layer 08:48 — The trust problem is bugs, not hallucinations 10:24 — The next hire: a go-to-market engineer 11:22 — HubSpot backbone, natural-language dashboards on top 13:15 — Where humans stay: taste, judgment, 14 usable hooks out of 20 15:24 — When everyone runs AI outbound, mailers and conferences win 19:08 — $25M to $100M without adding people 20:44 — The KPI that never changes: retention Guest Omar Ismail, COO at Ascend. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/omarismailb/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/omarismailb/) Ascend: https://www.joinascend.com/ (https://www.joinascend.com/) https://omarismail.com/projects/growth-engine (https://omarismail.com/projects/growth-engine) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

11. 

    26 Jul 2026

    100x The Human, Skip The Headcount — Amos Bar-Joseph (Swan AI) #002

    Amos Bar-Joseph built and scaled two B2B startups on the old playbook. Raise big, hire to forty people before the first million in revenue, then spend years fighting the bloat you created. With Swan AI he threw it out. In 2025 Swan went from zero to over 200 customers and seven figures in ARR with three founders and no additional hires. The number he's aiming at is ten million dollars in ARR per employee. This episode is about how that actually works. Amos started where most teams start, building a specialized agent for every task, and it didn't hold. Swan now runs its entire go-to-market on a single coding agent with a file system and a knowledge base it updates itself. We get into why data is not context, why the job that's left for humans is specification and review, and why he'll never let AI write his LinkedIn posts. Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:21 — Two startups on the old playbook, and why it broke 01:10 — The autonomous business: scaling ARR per employee, not valuation 01:39 — Zero to 200 customers with three founders 02:54 — Why Swan killed its specialized agents and runs one 04:54 — Data is not context: what your CRM teaches an agent 06:40 — Context engineering, and why it's the core RevOps skill now 10:29 — Fully automated, semi-automated, human-first 12:19 — Different beats better: don't give AI your edge 14:17 — Personal brand, and the rise of the analog 18:14 — Scaling one seller to 100x instead of hiring ten 20:41 — What this means for VC and bootstrapping 23:03 — Talent, compensation, and widening inequality 25:09 — A software revolution, not a labour revolution Guest Amos Bar-Joseph, co-founder of Swan AI. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amos-bar-joseph/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/amos-bar-joseph/) Swan: https://www.getswan.com/ (https://www.getswan.com/) About the show Growth After Headcount is a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of people. New episodes weekly. The book lands in 2027. More at https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/ (https://revenuewizards.com/)), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum)). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) X: https://x.com/OdobasicHaris (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

12. 

    22 Jul 2026

    Growth After Headcount — The Podcast (Trailer)

    The old playbook said scale revenue by scaling people. That playbook is dead. A new generation of companies is running on AI instead of headcount. Small teams, serious revenue, and org charts that would have looked impossible three years ago. This podcast goes inside those companies to find out how they actually work, from the founders building them. Each episode is a conversation with someone running an AI-native company: what they automated, what they didn't, what broke, and what the numbers really look like. No hype, no "AI is transforming business" filler. Just how these companies are built and what it means for everyone still hiring the old way. The podcast runs alongside the book of the same name, Growth After Headcount: How to Scale a Company with AI Instead of People. New episodes coming soon. Subscribe so you don't miss the first one. 🔗 Website & newsletter: https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/ (https://www.growthafterheadcount.com/) About the host Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/), a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum. He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. Connect with Haris: LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) &   (https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&redir_token=QUM4Zm9rUWRKWlhvUk1kc2pNM2IzTHdtNHpGYnxBR3JiS2FuUVdmaEs4WlBMWVpUVThsX2Z1ejRqX0JNbG5iQV9aT3p2RFBjYmVBVUhqQ3kxVVpab3FtTFNkR1BrdDhROTFKNGtBQnVTSkFxNU5qbUZsV0xKSkxXT2tvMkJqWEF3&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linkedin.com%2Fin%2Fharisodobasic%2F&v=8Q9--gtH41s)X (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

13. 

    21 Jul 2026

    Growth After Headcount — What is this about? #001

    The old playbook said scale revenue by scaling people. A new generation of companies is throwing it out. I'm Haris Odobasic, and this is Growth After Headcount — a podcast and a book about how companies scale with AI instead of headcount. I come from revenue operations, where the whole job is aligning people, process, technology, and data into one efficient revenue system. It works, but it's still people-dependent. Plug AI into that system and something changes: a handful of people can run work that used to take a hundred. That shift is creating a new kind of company, built lean from day one, and it's putting pressure on incumbents who grew the old way. Over the coming months I'll talk to the founders, investors, and operators building these companies. What they automated, what they didn't, what broke, and what the numbers actually look like. We'll get into the big questions too: can there be a one-person, billion-dollar company? What does a truly autonomous business look like when marketing, sales, service, and even the product improve themselves? New episodes weekly. Occasionally it'll just be me. Everything feeds the book, out in 2027. Follow along and build alongside me. Haris Odobasic is Managing Partner at Revenue Wizards (https://revenuewizards.com/)a GTM and RevOps consultancy, and the author of The RevOps Pendulum (https://geni.us/revops-pendulum). He writes and speaks about how AI is changing the way companies are built and scaled. Connect with Haris on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/harisodobasic/) or X (https://x.com/OdobasicHaris)

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