AndrianaMost founders treat AI as a reason to hire fewer people. In his latest Fast Company column, Yakov Filippenko argues it’s a reason to hire better ones.
Sam Altman keeps talking about solo-unicorns — billion-dollar companies run by one founder and a stack of models. VCs are cheering. Headcount is the new bloat. The message is clear: if you still need humans, you’re not technical enough.
Yakov Filippenko, CEO of Intch, just published a column in Fast Company that says the opposite. While everyone was cutting headcount, he hired a head of people. Her name is Kate. And she immediately broke something.
“Kate asked a simple question: Why would someone who is smarter than you choose to work here? I didn’t have a convincing answer.”
What followed was uncomfortable. Kate rewrote half of the company’s job descriptions. Her diagnosis: in areas where Yakov felt personally competitive, the requirements were set absurdly high — as if inviting someone who had just led Microsoft to its IPO. Not to attract talent. To make sure nobody applied.
“By hiding behind these unrealistic expectations, I was unconsciously filtering for people who wouldn’t threaten me.”
That’s not a hiring problem. That’s a founder ego problem. And according to Yakov, it’s one of the most expensive mistakes a scaling company can make.
[IMAGE: Illustration of a rocket with detaching stages — editorial style. Alt text: Rocket metaphor for founder delegation — the traits that help you launch can become drag at altitude.]
The rocket that won’t let go of its tail
The column opens with a metaphor that sticks: a rocket needs its booster to launch, but if the booster never detaches, it becomes drag. Founders are the same. The obsessive control that gets a company from zero to one becomes the ceiling at ten.
Yakov lays out the proof from three companies. At SailPlay (exited to Retail Rocket), he and his co-founder refused to delegate sales — convinced nobody could outperform them. At LinguaLeo, he was shipping code at 2 a.m. and back in the office by 10. Even outside tech: a relative running a furniture factory was personally checking electrical wiring while the business bled cash because nobody was running strategy.
The pattern is always the same. Control feels responsible. But it blocks scale.
What actually changed
Kate’s hire wasn’t symbolic. It restructured how the company operates. Engineers now spend more time on architecture. Commercial leads focus on partnerships. Managers get clearer feedback loops. The instinct-driven approach to people was replaced with a system that works regardless of who manages Gen Z, seasoned specialists, or both.
And here’s the twist that makes this column land differently from the usual “hire great people” advice: Yakov wrote it in a market where Intch routinely sees 4,000 to 5,000 applicants per opening. On paper, that’s leverage. In practice, it creates resentment. Candidates ghost. Engagement collapses. Having a head of people isn’t a luxury — it’s infrastructure for a market that punishes employers who mistake volume for strength.
The real argument
The column ends on the sharpest point:
“The narrative that AI will eliminate the need for strong teams assumes that building a company is primarily a technical problem. It isn’t. It’s a coordination problem, a trust problem, and, ultimately, a leadership problem.”
Founders who treat AI as a shortcut to scale are shrinking their own ambition. AI multiplies what you’ve already built — it doesn’t build it for you.
Read the full column on Fast Company →
Alisa
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