You know this already, but let’s say it out loud: most seed founders don’t die from “no product.” They die from hiring the wrong people, too fast, on vibes. Seventy percent washing out at the hiring stage is not “market conditions.” It’s self-inflicted. It’s you handing payroll to people who can’t ship, can’t sell, and can’t use A.I without hand-holding.
At seed, every hire is basically a cofounder whether you admit it or not. One bad senior engineer, one “head of growth” who only knows how to post on LinkedIn, one PM who forwards what ChatGPT said and calls it a spec… that’s six months gone. Your burn doesn’t care that they’re “nice” and “trying hard.” The bank account just quietly goes to zero.
The founders who survive this stage are doing something totally different right now. They’re running with a tiny, A.I-literate core: 2–5 killers who can code, sell, and automate their own work. No fat departments. No middle managers “aligning stakeholders.” Everyone on the team can open a terminal, an analytics dashboard, or an A.I copilot and actually get more done in less time.
If your current team needs a “prompt engineer” to spoon-feed them, you’re the one at risk. If your senior devs shrug at copilots and say “I prefer to code clean by hand,” that’s not craftsmanship, that’s a layoff memo waiting to happen. The market is already moving to one A.I-native engineer doing the work of three. You don’t need McKinsey to tell you where that ends.
Here’s the ugly part: keeping the wrong person for another quarter feels nicer than cutting them. It also quietly kills your runway, your culture, and your own learning speed. Every month you spend protecting low-leverage humans is a month you’re not building an automation-first stack around high-leverage ones. Your competitors are not kinder, they’re just colder.
And if you’re the one reading this as an employee, not a founder? This still lands on your desk. Either you become the A.I-literate core everyone builds around, or you’re the “we loved them, but…” line in the next all-hands. There isn’t a safe middle. Not this cycle.
You don’t need a 40-page hiring framework. You need to admit which roles can be replaced with A.I plus one hungry generalist… and which can’t.