When Headcount Isn’t the Answer
There’s a quiet assumption in ecommerce that no one really questions: when things get busy, you hire. When complexity creeps in, you hire. When something breaks, you hire. And sometimes that’s absolutely the right call. But this Playbook, sparked by a recent chat with Dave Thompson, founder of RunRemote and Hometime, challenges that reflex.
Dave has built and operated businesses across ecommerce, marketplaces and venture studios, and what stood out wasn’t a tactic, it was a mindset. He kept coming back to one word: leverage. Designing businesses so they scale through systems, distributed teams and smart tooling, not just headcount.
So in this Playbook, we revisit Dave’s philosophy and connect it with lessons from Alice Williams (Ovira), Damien Smith (Boozebud) and Serene Lim (Gellae). All very different operators, all solving the same problem: how to grow without just throwing more people at it.
Designing for leverage
Dave’s approach to building companies is refreshingly modern. Instead of defaulting to a big HQ and layers of management, he’s passionate about distributed teams, remote talent and capital efficiency. But this isn’t about cheap labour or cost-cutting theatre. It’s about narrowing the quality gap globally and then designing systems so work happens in the background without constant human intervention.
We’re living in a time where SaaS tools, no-code platforms and AI give small teams serious firepower. Dave’s question isn’t “who do we hire next?” – it’s “how do we set this up so it runs without us over-investing time?” That shift, from adding people to designing systems, is where leverage lives. When you design for leverage first, headcount becomes a choice, not a reflex.
Fix the role before you add a role
At Ovira, Alice Williams didn’t just keep stacking specialists as the brand grew. She stepped back and looked at how the work was flowing. Performance marketing over here, creative over there, insights somewhere in between, and suddenly everything needed a handover. Instead, she collapsed responsibilities into a true “growth” role with end-to-end ownership.
That might sound simple, but it removes lag. No waiting on briefs. No translation layers between what worked and what gets made next. The lesson isn’t “merge roles everywhere”; it’s question fragmentation. If work keeps slowing down, it’s often not because you’re under-resourced, but because ownership is blurred. Before you post that job ad, look at how the work is structured. Sometimes leverage is hiding in better role design.
Build once, deploy everywhere
Damien Smith runs multiple brands, but instead of treating each one like its own tech snowflake, his team operates off the same Shopify codebase. When they build a feature, fix a bug or roll out an improvement, they build it once and deploy it everywhere. It sounds technical, but it’s actually a headcount strategy.
Every time you customise unnecessarily or duplicate systems, you’re signing up for more developers, more QA, more ongoing maintenance. Shared architecture creates operational leverage. It prevents complexity from compounding. If your tech stack forces you to duplicate effort as you grow, headcount will follow. Standardisation isn’t boring: it’s scalable.
Automate repetition, not creativity
Serene Lim, founder of Gellae (the DIY gel nails brand quietly shaking up beauty) noticed her team felt stretched. The instinct could’ve been to hire. Instead, she looked at what was actually consuming time: it wasn’t creative strategy, it was repetitive distribution. Posting the same content across channels. Repurposing. Scheduling. Moving files around. So she systemised it. Automation handled the mechanics, freeing the team to focus on thinking, not copying and pasting. That’s the distinction that matters.
Automation shouldn’t replace judgment. That’s when things go sideways. It should remove work that doesn’t require it. If someone’s role is mostly resizing, reposting and re-uploading, that’s not a resourcing issue. That’s a workflow issue.
Scaling ecommerce without constantly adding headcount isn’t about squeezing more out of your team. It’s about designing better systems. Dave showed that distributed teams and modern tooling can create serious leverage. Alice showed that smarter role design can replace multiple hires. Damien proved that shared systems prevent duplication at scale. Serene demonstrated that automation should remove repetition, not thinking. Growth doesn’t automatically require a bigger team. But it does require better questions (and better design) before you reach for the hiring button.
In this Playbook:
- Why hiring is often a reflex, and what to question before you post the job ad
- How Dave Thompson designs businesses around leverage, not headcount
- Why distributed teams and modern tools create capital efficiency at scale
- How Ovira restructured roles to remove handoffs and speed up decision-making
- Why shared tech architecture prevents duplicated teams as you grow
- How Gellae uses automation to remove repetitive work without killing creativity
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