Damn the Economy! Full Speed Ahead!

I've had to do a lot of soul searching recently. The economy continues to head south, and our company, Firebrand Technologies, is experiencing unprecedented growth in both client acquisition, and in revenue. But, in business, you can only grow so much before you have to invest in more infrastructure, and, (gulp) more people.

Since early in the year, I've been watching the team here at Firebrand grow more and more taxed by our recent successes. And, during that time, they have done an incredible job of taking it all in stride, and giving it everything they have. This year, in addition to our client acquisition growth, we've also developed our most ambitious new set of applications, launched two new websites, ran a user conference, and even re-branded ourselves. We've also made significant investments in both internal and external IT hardware and software.

Then the economy started to tank.

As you can see from a very recent blog post - my initial inclination was to "hunker down", bank some cash, and wait for better times before hiring new staff. But now, I see that as a recipe for disaster. We have completely maximized the capacity of our team - no matter how many tools we throw at them to make them more efficient. If we don't get some new staff, we won't be able to support (to our own service level standards) all the new clients who have come on board. This could cause a whole host of bad things to happen, including putting a serious break on our growth.

So, to parody John Paul Jones - Damn the economy! Full Speed Ahead!

We've already made one strategic hire this week (announcement to be made in about two weeks), and we're looking for people in support, QA, and development. We've got some big things happening in 2009. We can't let the economy slow those plans, its very difficult getting the positive momentum that we currently enjoy. He have to keep it moving forward!

Is anyone else out there in this position?