A while back, I came across a hiring philosophy from Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of Windsurf, that stopped me cold.
He called it the “dehydrated entity” approach to hiring—and it's one of the most practical, clarity-inducing frameworks I’ve heard in a long time.
"You should only hire when the current team is genuinely underwater—when critical work is actively being dropped."
— Varun Mohan
This model flips the conventional wisdom on its head. Instead of hiring “just in time” or “ahead of need,” it forces you to feel the constraint first. It prioritizes intentionality over comfort, clarity over cushioning.
Let’s dig into why this works—and what it looks like in practice.
Why Startups Default to Overhydration
Startups love to hire. It feels like forward motion. Fundraise? Hire. Land a few customers? Hire. Can’t keep up with support tickets? Hire.
But this reflex leads to a bloated, overhydrated organism. You get:
- Tasks instead of outcomes.
- Busyness instead of urgency.
- Manufactured work instead of mission-critical execution.
And worst of all? You lose the sharpness that comes from being slightly overextended.
The dehydrated entity model solves for this by imposing a healthy scarcity.
The Core Idea: Pain Before Headcount
Under the dehydrated entity model, you only add people when it's undeniably clear that the team is breaking under pressure—and that what’s breaking is both important and unavoidable.
That means:
- Not when things are merely hard.
- Not when priorities are unclear.
- Not when people feel “stretched.”
You wait until critical work is visibly being dropped—not deferred or delayed, but actively falling on the floor.
That’s the moment when a new hire becomes a force multiplier instead of an organizational gamble.
What Actually Improves When You Delay Hiring
1. Prioritization Gets Ruthless (in a Good Way)
Scarcity forces judgment. You can’t do everything, so you have to decide what matters.
This pushes teams to say:
- “What’s the highest leverage thing we can do this week?”
- “What do we need to say no to?”
- “If we do nothing else, what must ship?”
You trade breadth for focus. And at early-stage startups, that’s almost always the right trade.
2. You Avoid Filling the Org With Manufactured Work
One of the worst outcomes of overhiring is how quickly people invent tasks to justify their roles. It’s not malicious—it’s natural.
But with spare bandwidth, teams tend to:
- Start pet projects with no customer pull
- Over-document processes
- Obsess over internal tooling
The dehydrated entity model immunizes you against this. Every person must fight for their bandwidth, and every project has to prove it deserves time.
3. New Hires Integrate Faster and Hit Harder
When you hire reactively—out of necessity—the role writes itself.
The team knows:
- What’s breaking
- Why it matters
- What success looks like
Onboarding becomes pointed, urgent, and mission-critical. New hires don’t wonder where to plug in—they’re stepping into a fire, not a fog.
Signs You're Ready to Rehydrate
Still unsure when to pull the hiring trigger? Look for signals like:
- Repeated deferral of critical roadmap items due to lack of capacity
- Team members consistently saying no to impactful work because they’re at bandwidth limits
- Customers or revenue being lost due to internal throughput issues
- Clear, focused justification for how a new hire would immediately unstick high-leverage work
If none of that is happening? Stay dehydrated.
Common Missteps to Watch Out For
🚫 Mistaking discomfort for unsustainability
Pressure isn’t a problem—it’s often a feature. Your job isn’t to make the team comfortable; it’s to make them effective.
Check if the pain is tied to critical outcomes. If not, resist the urge to "solve it with a hire."
🚫 Hiring for optionality
One of the most expensive phrases in a startup: “Let’s hire them—we’ll figure out how to use them.”
Don’t.
Unless you can articulate the broken pipe they’re fixing, delay the hire. Optionality sounds strategic. In practice, it muddies ownership and dilutes urgency.
🚫 Equating “more hands” with faster progress
Startups aren’t assembly lines. Most early-stage work requires context, judgment, and iteration.
Adding people to a messy, ambiguous domain often slows things down before it speeds them up.
How to Operationalize the Model
Here’s how to put the dehydrated entity model into practice:
1. Set a Default Hiring Freeze
Instead of “we hire when we feel like it,” flip the assumption:
“We only open a role when something truly important is breaking—and we’ve exhausted every other way to fix it.”
Make exceptions prove themselves.
2. Create a Shadow Hiring Plan
Each quarter, sketch the 1–2 hires you’d make if things broke. Document the trigger conditions.
This gives you a plan without a commitment—and lets you move quickly if the situation changes.
3. Audit Team Workload Transparently
Once a month, ask:
- What’s falling through the cracks?
- What’s painful but worth it?
- What are we doing that we could stop?
If nothing mission-critical is falling apart, hold the line.
Final Thought: Startups Should Feel a Little Thirsty
Varun Mohan’s dehydrated entity idea works because it captures the essence of high-performance teams: constraint, clarity, and commitment.
Yes, it’s uncomfortable. Yes, it will stretch you. But that stretch is where you find out what really matters—and who on your team can handle the altitude.
If your company doesn’t feel just a little dehydrated… you might already be bloated.