Compound Employee

Being One, Compensating One

Photograph by Lionel Hanh / Sipa / AP

About six months ago, I joined Rafiki by Nala. It was my first time in payments and fintech and my first role at a Series A company. Before this, I had been a founder and an investor, mostly focused on Seed and Pre-seed stages. Being an operator, though—especially at a growth-stage company—is an entirely different game. As an investor in such a company, you’re usually on the outside, making calls based on what you see. As an operator, you’re inside the system, shaping those calls in real time.

In these six months, my responsibilities have grown at a pace I could not have predicted. I started with Uganda, added Nigeria and Ghana, and now I lead the entire country management function. With every step, I’ve noticed something fascinating: the more responsibility I take on, the better my decision-making framework becomes. Even when I don’t have all the information, I’m able to make better calls, largely because I’ve been forced to learn quickly and adapt.

Initially, I didn’t fully understand what was happening. But now I see it clearly—responsibility is a forcing function. The more I take on, the more my perspective expands. The lens through which I view the company and its priorities grows wider, and I start to see how everything connects. As a result, I don’t just become better at my current role; I begin to operate on an entirely different level.

This brings me to something I’ve realized about myself. For years, I thought I was simply a generalist—a person who can keep the ship running but not someone who’s exceptional at any one thing. That’s still true. But not all generalists are created equal. Many are broad but shallow, which is why most companies prefer specialists—people who are the best in their vertical and optimize for their specific function.

However, even though specialists are valuable, their focus is often narrow, and their perspective limited. This causes them to optimize locally for their department, sometimes without considering the broader system.

Then there’s another kind of generalist, the kind I’ve come to understand as rare and transformative. These are people who care deeply about how everything interconnects. They care about finance, legal, product, operations—how each piece impacts the other and what that means for the company as a whole. The more they learn about these systems, the better they prioritize. They don’t just move their piece on the chessboard; they think about how to tilt the entire game in their favor.

These people are what I now call compound employees. The term comes from Parker Conrad’s idea of a compound startup—one that creates multiple layers of value that reinforce each other. A compound employee does the same thing on an individual level. They grow exponentially, not linearly. With each new challenge, their learning compounds. They integrate knowledge across roles and functions, accelerating not just their growth but the growth of the entire organization.

Compound employees are rare, but when you find them, you’ll notice they thrive on responsibility. They don’t wait for things to be handed to them; they look for vacuums, pick up what needs doing, and make it theirs. They are learning machines, constantly closing gaps in their understanding, and they make decisions with the company’s broader success in mind. They’re the people who could be CEOs of startups, but they can be just as powerful in any role where systems-level thinking and execution matter.

Here’s where things get complicated. Because compound employees scale so rapidly, they often outgrow their job descriptions—and their compensation—much faster than traditional HR systems can keep up. Most HR processes are designed for linear growth: annual reviews, incremental raises, and predefined career ladders. Compound employees break that system. They don’t grow step by step; they leap. The risk is that if you don’t adjust their compensation and recognition to match their contributions, they’ll leave. And when they leave, you’re not just losing an employee; you’re losing an exponential contributor—an equivalent of a 10x engineer.

Startups that want to attract and retain compound employees need to rethink how they compensate and manage these individuals. This starts with breaking free from rigid processes. Instead of waiting for annual or structured reviews, founders should have the discretion to adjust compensation in real time—essentially, “mark-to-market.” This could involve creating a special pool of funds specifically for these scenarios, managed outside the usual HR frameworks. Stock options are critical, but so is direct cash compensation—compound employees need to feel like owners, but they also need to feel valued today.

Recognition is just as important as compensation. These people aren’t motivated by titles or bureaucracy; they’re motivated by impact and the sense that their contributions are recognized and rewarded in real-time. Publicly acknowledge their work, give them autonomy, and match their compensation to the exponential value they create. And don’t be afraid to load them with more responsibility than you think they can handle. They’re not just capable of handling it—they thrive on it, whether by working harder and putting in more hours, working smarter by ruthlessly prioritizing, or working faster by clearing their to-do lists quicker than they fill up.

When I think about my own journey, I see all these patterns in myself whenever I’m an employee. For a long time, I didn’t have the language to describe what I was. I wasn’t a specialist, and calling myself a generalist felt incomplete. But now I realize I’ve been operating as a compound employee all along. And if I could give one piece of advice to startups, it’s this: find these people, invest in them, and let them run. They won’t just grow their careers—they’ll grow your company, exponentially.