In this episode of How I Hire, Andy Mowat speaks with Manny Medina, Co-Founder & CEO of Paid (an AI agent monetization platform), about dismantling the traditional SaaS hiring playbook that helped define his previous company, Outreach. After scaling Outreach to over 1,000 employees and hundreds of millions in revenue, Manny reveals why he's now refusing to hire senior executives and instead building Paid with a radical junior-first, contractor-heavy approach. His contrarian insights challenge twenty years of VC-backed wisdom about org structure, talent evaluation, and the fundamental economics of building software companies in the AI era.
Topics discussed:
- Why the era of templated org structure playbooks is dead: Manny challenges the assumption that every SaaS company needs the standard SDR → AE → CSM structure, arguing companies should question whether these roles should even exist rather than automatically copying what worked elsewhere.
- Mission charts over org charts at Paid: Instead of traditional reporting structures, Paid organizes around specific revenue missions (self-serve for agent builders, SaaS companies selling agents, enterprise) with teams aligned to outcomes rather than titles or hierarchies.
- The "AI first, then contractor, then person" hiring framework: This progression allows maximum flexibility to correct inevitable hiring mistakes while testing whether roles can be automated before committing to full-time headcount.
- Why "no breath is better than bad breath" thinking is dangerous: Manny learned that hiring mediocre talent lowers the bar for future hires and signals to existing team members they can coast, creating a gradual slide from A-players to B-plus teams.
- The power of forward deploy engineers learning directly from customers: Putting junior talent in front of customers accelerates their learning curve and business acumen faster than any internal training, while costing a fraction of senior hires.
- How aggressive negotiation reveals future management headaches: When candidates push too hard on compensation during offers, it often predicts they'll renegotiate every 60 days, turning one-on-ones into advocacy sessions rather than productive work discussions.
- Hiring mistakes aren't permanent if you stay close: By personally onboarding everyone and maintaining proximity to new hires in the first 30-60 days, you can quickly spot mismatches between talent and role requirements, then course-correct before damage compounds.
ABOUT YOUR HOST:
Andy Mowat has built GTM engines for top companies throughout his career. He led Revenue Operations and Demand Gen at four unicorns, including scaling from $10M to $100M ARR at both Upwork and Culture Amp, and helping guide Box and Carta through IPO scale. With a passion for connecting people, Andy has advised executives on their careers for years and launched Whispered to make searching for executive roles less intimidating.
Learn more about about Whispered: www.whispered.com
Interact with AI Andy: www.whispered.com/whisper-search
