Almost two years ago, I closed the chapter on a business I had co-founded and led for 15 years.
One thing I took with me from that chapter kept coming back to me: a spreadsheet.
I didn’t jump into the next thing.
I spent time testing different directions against a simple question:
What kind of business is actually worth building now?
I wanted something with long-term value, geographic freedom, resilience, and room to scale without building another heavy operating machine around myself.
One idea kept pulling me back.
A spreadsheet I had built years earlier for my SMM manager.
13 metrics.
Weighted scores.
Three performance tiers.
Pay tied to outcomes, not activity.
When I first showed it to the manager running my business, he said:
“This solves a real problem.”
He was right.
The problem wasn’t just fairness for the employee.
It was relief for the person managing them.
When you hire someone, salary helps motivate them at first.
But motivation fades.
The salary doesn’t.
A few months later, you’re in one-on-ones trying to understand what changed.
Then come the awkward conversations about raises, bonuses, and whether the work still matches the pay.
That spreadsheet helped solve part of that.
Clear metrics.
Clear levels of reward.
Clear expectations on both sides.
Less guesswork.
Less emotional management.
Less need to constantly “motivate” people by hand.
If someone was still disengaged under fair and transparent rules, that usually pointed to one of two things:
Either the metrics were wrong.
Or the person was.
For a long time, I didn’t know how to turn that spreadsheet into something useful for other teams.
Then I found Lovable
For the first time, I could build a real interface around the idea myself and turn a working internal system into a simple product.
That product is PayByResult.
An AI tool that generates KPI-based pay formulas for small teams.
Describe a role, get metrics, weights, and performance tiers in 30 seconds.
The first version is live now.
If you could get a ready-made pay formula for one role in your team, which role would you start with?