Ask HN: Who Should We Hire Next?

There are only really two ways to scale an agency, as far as I know.

1. You can charge more.

2. You take on more work in parallel.

The second is usually a thing to some degree, you add devs etc., but it doesn't drastically increase your earnings per head so there tend to be diminishing returns - network costs of a larger team, the need to sustain a flow of more and larger deals. This requires some drastic changes to the company itself, how you work, the type of deals you pursue...it can be profitable, but it's a mess.

Which leaves #1, increasing the value of deals you take on with roughly the existing team. What is stopping you from doubling your next quote? Skills gap? Type of project? I'm betting it's more "type of client" and "sales process" than needing another developer, since (from a once-over of your team section) you seem to have the major bases covered already, and perhaps more so than you'd need with a more narrow project type & target customer.

Re: specific roles you asked about...

There are technical writing specialists & sales engineers. A good sales engineer is expensive if they're any good, and very likely overkill for a small agency. It's usually up to the person or people running the agency to learn sales. There's a spectrum of skill involved, but even the shallow end makes you VERY dangerous in comparison to the median sales-averse developer.

As to a technical writer...how much does documentation affect your deals & billing rate? This can probably be better addressed by process, make improving doc quality a real priority by setting aside time for it every week & comping for training materials on better docs and copywriting.

I don't know if this would work in your specific business sector but when I read your description I thought: Take a page from the Pivotal Labs playbook. They did, and do, exceptionally nerdy things. But they steer their clients with a very deep Extreme Programming, Agile methodology. All of their engineers are also project people. All of their engineers can also talk to clients. But they do so in a very specific way. They plan projects the same way. They write documentation the same way. They interact with clients the same way. They have the "Pivotal Way" and they stick to it.

When they came into a project that I was working on they took two hours to look at what we were doing. They took another two hours to map our a plan to get us where we were going using an XP style story map. They spent an hour getting it into Tracker and having a planning meeting with us. Then they started working. Using Agile Principles they were able to keep up with the scoping, the docs, and the communication in about half an hour a day every day. This was no small project. I can't say how much we paid them for those few months, but imagine a number with seven digits. So, this was not a small project.

I have used this same methodology myself and it has been extremely beneficial and lucrative. We get a lot of work done, we make clients very happy, and we live according to principles we really believe in. It's amazing for business.

At any rate, hopefully this will help you a bit. To answer your question more directly, hire another engineer. Change the parts of your business that aren't effective for your style of work to something that is effective. Good luck!

There are options that aren't mentioned that are worth considering:

1. Don't grow. Maybe this means not at all. Maybe it means slowly. Maybe it means not right now because there isn't a good plan for handling it. There's nothing wrong with a lifestyle business and anyway that's more or less what a consultancy usually amounts to even at 50 staff.

2. Merge. Buy or sell to or partner with with a company which is strong where you are weak and vice versa. This is also a long play.

3. At the size you are, the Owners need to be dealing with clients on important issues. Bringing in another partner, and by partner I mean partner, will allow the client load to be shared among more people.

Good luck.

An account executive? If you wanted to spend more time writing code, and less time getting bogged down with contracts etc. Plus, as a service provider myself, there will be dry spells. Having someone pounding pavement will help to smooth that out and continue to help your grow in the good times.