This AI CEO wants to keep his startup ‘dehydrated,’ hiring only when absolutely needed

• Windsurf's CEO wants to keep his company lean and light.
• The goal is to be the smallest company possible to meet its ambitions, Varun Mohan said.
• Windsurf builds AI tools that help developers write code.

Windsurf's CEO and cofounder, Varun Mohan, wants to keep his startup lean — and dry.

"I want the company to almost be like this dehydrated entity," said Mohan on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" published Sunday. "Every hire is like a little bit of water, and we only go back and hire someone when we're back to being dehydrated," he added.

The goal isn't to idolize small teams for the sake of it, he said. It's to "be the smallest company we can be to satisfy our ambitions."

Windsurf, formerly known as Codeium, builds AI tools that let developers write code using natural language prompts.

It's part of a new wave of startups leaning into "vibe coding," a term coined by OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy to describe giving AI prompts to write code. As Karpathy puts it, developers can "fully give in to the vibes" and "forget the code even exists."

Founded in 2021, Silicon Valley-based Windsurf has raised more than $200 million in venture capital funding, according to PitchBook data. The company was valued at $1.25 billion in a deal led by General Catalyst last year, with backing from Greenoaks and Kleiner Perkins.

Revenue per employee has become an important metric for investors, especially after many tech companies grew rapidly during the pandemic. Maintaining smaller teams is often preferred if it leads to the same output level.

"If we can crack actually being a fairly sizable company but still operate as if we're a startup," Mohan said, "that's the dream."

Windsurf has 170 employees, per data provider PitchBook, and its website lists more than 30 open roles on its website, including software engineers and recruiters.

Lean teams, less drama

Mohan also said keeping head count low isn't just a financial decision — it's a way to avoid unnecessary problems.

Hiring for teams where there are already enough people often leads to "weird politics," he said.

When there's no real need for their role, people may manufacture something to work on.

"Realistically, it's not that important, but they'll go out and try to convince the rest of the organization that it is," he said.

That kind of distraction, he said, can slow a company down more than it helps. "As a startup, we don't have the bandwidth to go out and deal with that," he added.

Hiring should only happen when "everyone's just almost raising their hands and being like, 'I'm dying, we need one more person,'" he said.

Windsurf did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.