📶 Market map: Growing revenue-per-employee

“In the next decade, a team of 10 or less will build a billion dollar business.”

Somebody told me that a few years ago, and I thought they were insane. Headcount and scale were correlated, right? (right!?)

Wrong.

In today’s world, efficiency is the metric that everybody is tracking, and we’re seeing more and more businesses popping up that are helping other businesses grow via reduction.

We think revenue-per-employee is the north star metric for VC-backed companies over the coming years, and we’re actively betting on companies powering this movement.

Here is our full breakdown on the different markets in this category and the opportunity zones in each.

This entire market map was created through Harmonic.

It’s one of the few tools we use to run our business every day, and we think every investor is actually at a disadvantage if they don’t use it.

Here’s their website to learn more and talk to their team.

Managing a CRM can feel like a full time job that requires multiple people and constant maintenance. Anybody that has dealt with a bad CRM can feel that pain.

Smart CRMs integrate with existing workflows, give full transparency into what is being said by who to whom, and capture more details beyond the surface layer, effectively giving teams the original promise of a CRM: having a useful source of truth.

The best sales teams don’t just work harder—they work smarter. Sales enablement tools turn good salespeople into great ones by giving them the data, context, and automation they need to close deals faster.

These platforms help with note-taking, call intelligence, playbooks, and real-time coaching, eliminating the grunt work so reps can focus on selling. AI is unlocking another level of efficiency by surfacing insights instantly instead of relying on manual input.

Lead generation is one thing—prioritization is another. Most CRMs are glorified spreadsheets that store data but don’t tell sales teams where to focus.

Intelligent pipeline tools take in multiple data points (engagement, buying signals, historical patterns) and help revenue teams predict which prospects are most likely to convert. The result? A more targeted, effective sales motion that closes higher-quality deals in less time.

Outbound sales is shifting from manual to automated. AI-powered sales agents can now generate, personalize, and send outbound messages at scale—without losing the human touch.

These tools don’t just automate emails and follow-ups. They adapt to responses, book meetings, and even handle objections, effectively replacing an SDR team with a software-driven approach that continuously learns and optimizes.

Customer support is expensive. AI-powered support platforms are reducing the cost per ticket by handling common inquiries instantly and routing complex issues to human agents only when necessary.

The new generation of support tools doesn’t just automate responses—they enhance self-service options, integrate with existing help desks, and provide teams with deeper customer insights.

Legal costs are a tax on doing business, and for startups, every hour spent on contract reviews or compliance is time not spent on growth.

AI-driven legal platforms help companies generate, review, and negotiate contracts in minutes instead of weeks. They also ensure compliance with regulatory frameworks, making legal work faster, cheaper, and more scalable.

Every company has internal workflows that are unique to their business, but building automation around them usually requires engineering time.

These platforms allow non-technical teams to create and customize workflows that automate repetitive tasks, integrate with other tools, and optimize operations—all without writing a line of code.

The best candidates are rarely inbound—they’re headhunted. Recruiting tools are shifting from static job boards to AI-powered sourcing, where top talent is identified, engaged, and nurtured before they even start looking.

These platforms automate sourcing, outreach, and candidate assessments, giving hiring teams an unfair advantage in competitive talent markets.

Regulatory compliance isn’t optional, but it’s a pain for most businesses. The challenge is keeping up with constantly changing rules across industries, jurisdictions, and frameworks.

New compliance tools automate monitoring, reporting, and enforcement, ensuring businesses stay on the right side of regulations without hiring full-time legal teams.

For most companies, bookkeeping is an unavoidable time sink that adds zero strategic value.

AI-driven bookkeeping tools remove the burden by automating expense tracking, reconciliation, and financial reporting, giving teams instant visibility into cash flow and burn without relying on manual data entry.

Developers want to ship code—not get bogged down in process overhead.

Modern dev tools reduce friction by automating testing, deployments, and code reviews, helping teams move faster with fewer engineers. These platforms bring efficiency to every layer of the software development lifecycle, making small engineering teams more productive than ever.

The ability to build software without writing code is one of the biggest unlocks in modern business.

No-code platforms empower operators, marketers, and non-technical founders to build websites, apps, and workflows that would have previously required expensive dev resources. As these tools become more powerful, the gap between technical and non-technical teams continues to shrink.

The highest-leverage teams in the future won’t be the ones with the most employees—they’ll be the ones that use technology to multiply their output.

The companies listed above are arming small teams with the tools to punch above their weight, compressing entire departments into automated functions, and redefining what "scale" actually means.

If you’re building in this space, please reach out. We’d love to talk.

70+ companies recreating the modern investment firm built with Harmonic

Become an Operator or Boardroom subscriber to see all companies in this market map, and get all of this too: