In 2023 we did what most growing agencies are told to do. We went all in on technology hiring, and it worked. Revenue grew, the team grew, and our biggest clients kept growing with us.
Then hiring froze. Two of our largest clients paused, and close to 80% of the business left with them. Getting back took more than two years.
The problem wasn't the market. It was concentration.
Growth hides risk
When a few clients are growing fast, everything looks healthy. Pipelines are full, recruiters are busy, and nobody asks what happens if one account goes quiet. The same focus that grew us was quietly making us fragile.
What I watch now
Client concentration. How much of our net fee income comes from our top two clients.
Net fee income, not revenue. Revenue tells you what came in. Net fee income tells you what the business actually earned.
Recruiter productivity. Separating what a recruiter controls, what they influence, and what they can't control.
Forecast versus reality. Not just what we expect to close, but how often we're right.
The advice that's right today can become wrong tomorrow.
Different stages need different answers
Survival, growth and resilience call for different decisions. Going all in was the right call for growth. It was the wrong call for resilience. None of these answers is right forever, and the job is knowing which stage you're in.
That lesson shaped everything we built next, from how datavruti chooses clients to why we're building estana for agencies that want to scale without betting the business on a few accounts.
All writing
What losing 80% of our business taught me about concentration risk
In 2023, two clients left as hiring froze, and most of datavruti went with them. Here's what I watch differently now.
