R5-07 Hiring plan

Supports slide 32.

The next hire is a Growth Lead for OpenControls. This plan is from my Sprint 24 submission (v2, Oct 2026).

Why this role, why now

The last skills audit found the bottleneck had moved from finding demand to scaling the company to meet it. Michael and I are the decision nodes on too much. The Growth Lead runs outbound through Salesforge and builds the partner ecosystem (resellers, platforms and AI-agent builders) that carries our API and MCP to buyers. It brings cash in sooner, and it’s the first lane owned by someone other than a founder.

How it ties to the values

Design choice	Value
One owner per lane: me on strategy and architecture, Michael on engineering, the Growth Lead on the ecosystem	Human above the loop
Written decision records before meetings	Written, not remembered
Every growth claim carries a dated metric	Show your work; Measure, then decide
Grow through partners’ platforms and resellers	Translation, not conquest

Who we’re looking for

Five ranked traits: ownership, critical thinking, strong written communication, resourcefulness, customer-centric thinking. Plus AI literacy and systems thinking, because the role directs agents rather than doing every task by hand. Non-negotiable across the team: accountability, clear writing, critical thinking.

First 90 days: graduated autonomy

Days	The agents	The Growth Lead
1 to 30	Propose: draft sequences, partner research, pipeline notes	Approves everything. Reads the decision records. Runs the first partner calls personally.
31 to 60	Run low-risk work inside agreed limits	Owns the funnel numbers. Signs every partner term.
61 to 90	Work at the levels the Growth Lead sets	Sets each task type’s autonomy level in writing. Presents first ecosystem results.

Pay and retention

A profit share tied to the ecosystem revenue the Growth Lead builds, and freedom to work from anywhere. Retention comes from a clear lane, agents that remove the busywork, written decisions, visible credit and a monthly human review of agent output.

Leadership, one quality

Naming the human above the loop, and being that human when it’s uncomfortable.

Not yet evidenced: “paid from partner revenue, not from the runway” and “equity” for people (slide 32). Sprint 24 commits to a profit share tied to ecosystem revenue; it doesn’t say equity or name the funding source.

Not yet evidenced: a hiring date. The scenarios (R5-05) move it to Q1 in double attach; no base date is written down.

Sources:

• Sprint 24 micro-assessment v2, Sprint24_Microassessment_Cougias_v2.pdf (Google Drive, Sprint 24 Micro-assessment folder)
• Sprint 24 Organizational Blueprint, Sprint24_Organizational_Blueprint_Cougias.xlsx