#352 - David DeWolf, CEO of Knownwell, on when NOT to scale

This podcast interview focuses on the critical decisions that define successful scaling. My guest is David DeWolf, CEO of Knownwell.After growing Three Pillar Global to 2000 employees across nine countries, David learned that sometimes the best way to scale is to deliberately slow down. During COVID, he made the bold choice to retain all employees despite revenue decline - a decision that led to tripling the business within a year. Now with Knownwell, he's applying these scaling lessons to build an AI company with intention, starting with 500 customer interviews before writing a single line of code.Their mission: To help professional services firms prevent "surprise churn” by elevating human relationships and experiences.And this inspired me, and hence I invited David to my podcast. We explore what it really takes to build an AI company that elevates rather than replaces human relationships. His approach challenges conventional wisdom about scaling, product development, and leadership - drawing from lessons that helped him grow his previous company from startup to 2000 employees and survive multiple market crises. But what's most fascinating is how he's applying these insights to tackle one of the biggest pain points in professional services: the struggle to see relationship problems before they become relationship crises.Here's a quote from David:We had an inbound lead that found us through the podcast and ended up signing a rather large contract before we even not only wrote a line of code, but before we had an engineer on staff.By listening to this podcast you will learn:How to secure major contracts before writing a single line of code (and why this might be smarter than building first)Why CEOs should never delegate customer relationships, even when scaling rapidlyHow staking your brand position before having a product can accelerate your go-to-market strategyWhy implementing lightweight business systems early gives you an unfair advantage in scalingFor more information about the guest from this week:David DeWolfWebsite: knownwell.com