How much quality does a founder lose each time they delegate?

Vlad Podoliako, founder of Belkins, says every handoff costs about 20% of the quality you would deliver yourself. Here is how he spotted he was the bottleneck.

Vlad Podoliako's rule of thumb is about 20% per handoff. If you're the 100, look for someone who can reach 80% of your quality, and accept that the next layer down gets 60, then 40, then 20. That's a rule of thumb from his own experience, not a study. His point is that founders who expect 100% at every level end up doing the work themselves, and become the bottleneck.

Vlad co-founded Belkins, a B2B appointment-setting company, in 2017 with his partner Michael Maximoff, and they built it without outside money. He says he's been running it for ten years. I wanted him on the show because of what happened around year five or six, when he realized the thing slowing the company down was him.

How do you know you have become the bottleneck?

Your metrics stall, and you're convinced you're doing great work. That's how Vlad describes it. From day one he and Michael split the functions, one on sales and one on operations and delivery. As Belkins grew they kept swapping hats. At one point Vlad was head of sales and head of marketing at once, then Michael took them back, and so on across legal, finance, delivery, HR and recruiting.

Both of us thought that we are doing really great and really effective like job function for us, for people, for company but it's not.

Vlad Podoliako, 02:13

The second problem was how he pushed change through. He tried to force the transformation the company needed instead of sitting beside his team and saying let's do it together. People who disagreed went along anyway, because he was the CEO. That caused a lot of stress, he said, and it didn't help the company.

This is example how you can basically become a bottleneck by doing a great thing.

Vlad Podoliako, 04:18

I recognized myself in that. I nearly pulled my hair out from wearing too many hats. What Vlad describes is force, and force works for a while. It also leaves you holding every function, and nobody else learns to carry one.

What is the 80% rule for delegation?

It's a way to set your expectations before you hand anything off. Vlad frames your own work as 100%. You're confident in it, but you can't stretch yourself across every task. So you look for people who can reach at least 80% of what you'd deliver.

You just need to find out people who can at least achieve 80% of the quality of the goal or results that you potentially can achieve as a hundred.

Vlad Podoliako, 07:58

Then the catch. Each layer of management trades off about another 20%. Your direct report is at 80, their manager's hire is at 60, and on down to 40 and 20. Vlad says that's how you end up asking why the company isn't delivering for clients or closing new sales. He wants founders to accept that quality is limited and gets shared across every step of the chain.

My grandfather taught me the same math when I was eight. He told me to take myself and multiply by 0.8. I expected everyone to work as hard and as well as I did, and he said the first thing I had to change was the expectation. When I asked Vlad whether he's okay with 80% of himself, he laughed and said he isn't always happy about it. Every CEO, he said, is choosing between bad options and picking the one whose consequences they can live with.

Does working 200% set the right example?

It can build a culture, and Vlad doesn't recommend it. In the first five years he led by example at 200%, which meant bad sleep, skipped meals and no gym. It motivated people around him to work at 100 or 120% of their capacity, and Belkins grew on that energy. He calls it unhealthy now and says he wouldn't suggest it to anyone.

I lived that too. When I was Vlad's age, sleep was an intrusion on my day. Now I work eleven to four, Tuesday through Thursday, and I hold that line. The difference is that I stopped expecting a team to match a pace that was never sustainable for me either.

What is the need to be needed?

It's the part of a founder that wants the questions, even while complaining about them. I found mine when I sold my company. The money landed on a Friday, I was excited for about ten minutes, and by Monday I had zero appointments on my calendar. I didn't know I needed to be needed until nobody needed me.

Vlad knows exactly what I meant. He says that once Belkins had the right people in sales, marketing and delivery, his calendar emptied and he got bored.

It's starting to be boring for me when I'm kind of starting to have less meetings or have less tasks and maybe that's kind of something broken in me.

Vlad Podoliako, 15:53

He doesn't think it's broken, and neither do I. He works best with ten things on his list and a deadline burning. So he took that energy somewhere it helps. By his count he now has about sixteen companies, plus or minus one, mostly in sales tech, with Belkins the biggest. He says he's managed 500 people at one point and has around 250 to 300 across all of them today. He describes the Belkins team as self-sustaining, and he spends his time creating the next thing.

What should a founder do with that energy instead?

Point it at growth the team can't find alone. Vlad's view is that once a business runs on its own, you only step back into it with a big idea, the kind that could double or triple it, and you present it to the team as one part of the work. Otherwise your job is to build something new, or rest.

That's where agents change the math for me. The old chain went 80, 60, 40, 20 because every layer was one more person. When an 80% person has agents doing the routine work under them, their output isn't capped by their own hours. The work that no longer needs you goes to them, and you get back to the part you love.

Cut from You’re the Bottleneck: How AI Is Changing Delegation for Founders.