I almost fired my first hire because I couldn't track what she was even doing - Here's what changed
Six months ago, I hired my first developer. Finally. I was no longer a solo founder. We were going to scale.
Two weeks in, I wanted to un-hire her.
Not because she wasn't talented. She was. The problem was chaos. She'd send me Slack messages about what she was working on.
I send her GitHub links to tasks. Clients would email random updates. My Google Sheets was three months out of date.
I honestly couldn't tell you what she was doing, what was done, what was blocked, or where we stood on client deadlines. We had no system. Just noise.
I remember one client asking for a status update at 3pm on a Friday. I spent 45 minutes digging through Slack, emails, and GitHub to piece together where we were. The developer was blocked waiting for feedback I never saw.
We looked disorganized and unprofessional.
The breaking point:
I realized I was spending more time hunting for information than actually shipping. At one point, I was tracking projects in Notion, tasks in Asana, time in a spreadsheet, invoices in another Google Sheet, and client communication across email and Slack.
Every tool was a context switch. Every switch was a distraction. Some days I'd forget to update multiple tools and everyone had different versions of "what's happening".
What I needed:
One place. Everything in one place. Tasks, files, team communication, time tracking, client visibility, invoices - all connected. Not scattered across 6 different apps.
That's when I found teamcamp.app. It sounds simple because it is.
What actually changed:
First day: I created one project, broke it into milestones and tasks. Assigned work to my developer. Invited the client to see their project updates in real-time.
The developer stopped sending me Slack updates. Tasks were her source of truth. Clients could see exactly what's done, what's in progress, and what's blocked - without me being the messenger.
Time tracking became automatic. Every task had hours logged. No more guessing about how long things take.
Client portal was game-changing. Instead of 15 emails asking "where are we?", clients logged in and saw everything. Automatically. Dashboard with deadlines, completion percentage, everything.
When invoices time came around? I didn't manually compile hours anymore. Teamcamp pulled time data straight into invoices and even integrated with Stripe for payments.
The metrics:
My context switching dropped by 60%. Time spent in status meetings went from 3 hours per week to 0. Client questions decreased by 70% because they had visibility.
Most importantly: my developer went from feeling like a burden to me to being fully autonomous. She could see her own progress, client priorities, and deadlines without me micromanaging.
That $59 per month tool probably saved me $5,000+ in my own time and prevented me from burning out my first hire.
What I learned:
The problem wasn't my team member. It was that I was trying to scale with a solo founder's broken system. I needed the infrastructure to work asynchronously and transparently.
You can't hire great people and then make them work inside chaos. They'll leave.
Real talk:
When you're solo, a messy system is tolerable. When you're two people, it becomes toxic. By your third hire, it'll destroy your company.
What's your biggest pain point with your team right now? Are you struggling with visibility, communication, or something else? I'm genuinely curious what breaks first when founders move from solo to team.
