Cydarm Cut Their Team — And Somehow Became More Productive

In 2023, a lot of good founders got punched in the gut. Fundraising stalled. Sales slowed. And even with strong products, teams were forced to make brutal decisions just to stay alive.

That’s exactly where Vaughan Shanks, co-founder and CEO of Cydarm, found himself.

Cydarm is a cybersecurity case management platform built around human collaboration — not automation-for-automation’s-sake. But when capital dried up and revenue lagged, Vaughan had to cut deep. And what followed wasn’t just painful — it forced a level of operational clarity most startups only talk about.

Here’s what other founders can learn from the year Cydarm nearly ran out of road — and how they got sharper because of it.

Key Takeaways

• Even with a strong product, Cydarm had to downsize in 2023
• They shifted from multiple parallel projects to one critical path
• Sprints became about focus, not speed — and productivity actually increased
• Spare engineering capacity was reallocated to maintenance, not waste
• The result: a smaller team building better, faster, and more confidently

The Cut That Changed Everything

By late 2023, Cydarm’s burn was too high, revenue too uneven, and funding too elusive.

“We were way out over our skis. The fundraising environment was brutal.”

So they made the hard call: let go of most of the team and restructure around a core product team. But with fewer hands, the work didn’t stop. It just had to get sharper — fast.

The Pivot to One Path

Before the cut, Cydarm was running multiple initiatives in parallel — a common (and tempting) move with a larger team.

But after the reset?

“We committed to one thing at a time. One sprint goal. One critical path. No distractions.”

This shift meant: • No more three half-built features
• No more split sprint goals
• A laser focus on what would actually move the product forward

Even better — when only one or two people are on the critical path, everyone else can support them without creating blockers. Maintenance, bug fixes, and polish work still get done — but nothing stops the main objective.

Why Less Actually Delivered More

With a smaller team, communication got simpler. Context switches disappeared. Coordination overhead dropped off a cliff.

“Somehow, we were more productive. We built more with less.”

Sprints stopped being about speed. They became about clarity — knowing exactly what had to ship, why it mattered, and how to keep it unblocked at all costs.

The Critical Path Mindset

One of the most useful ideas from Vaughan’s story: every sprint has a critical path — a sequence of dependencies that determine the outcome.

“If you’ve got five people all working on five things, you get five mediocre outcomes. But if four people are supporting the one person who’s unblocking the real work — you win.”

The lesson? Don’t aim for maximum utilization. Aim for maximum forward motion.

Final Advice for Founders

“Focus isn’t about doing fewer things. It’s about finishing the thing that matters most — completely.”

Book a Free AI Assessment if your team is lean, your priorities are piling up, or your ops feel stuck. We’ll help you use AI to streamline workflows, reduce coordination drag, and turn limited capacity into leverage.