Headcount as of 2026-08-30: 1 full-time (Michael Houck) + 8 active staff contractors, confirmed by Michael against a Thera pull.
Active staff contractors (8): Ben Ornstein, Blake Emal, Blake Stewart, Charlene Sernicula, Rafael Bruno, Reina Beltran, Tatem Lindner, Venus Ramos.
Contractor mix: content writers (Megaphone), engineers, VAs, ops/sales people. Two contractors are also equity holders with client-count-based monthly rates: Blake Emal (Megaphone) and Tatem Lindner (JOLT!); detail Owner tier.
For leverage math, “person” = FT + active staff contractors = 9 as of this date. This replaces the 2026-07-29 figure of 16 (1 + 15), which was an estimate made before Thera was queryable and was never reconciled. Anything downstream still quoting 16 is stale.
Counted here are STAFF contractors only. The RYEVALLEY_MEGAPHONE_CREATORS Thera pool
holds 91 further active people, but those are per-post newsletter/content creator
micro-payouts, not team; do not fold them into headcount or leverage denominators.
Thera is a starting point for this count, not the authority. A payroll record lags reality in both directions: a contract stays Active because nobody closed it (Mehul), and an equity holder can go months without an invoice while working (Tatem). Use a Thera pull to assemble the candidate list, then have Michael confirm it. Never derive someone’s status from invoice recency alone.
Open discrepancies (do not silently resolve)
Resolved 2026-08-30 by Michael, after a Thera pull surfaced three conflicts:
- Angelica Beronilla: inactive, was a VA. She was being paid with no page in
people/at all; page created. Not in the count. - Mehul Jariwala: inactive as of 2026-08-01. His Thera contract still reads Active (last invoice 2026-07-31) because it was never closed out. Not in the count.
- Tatem Lindner: active, and in the count. No Thera invoice since 2026-05-10, which for an equity holder is a payment-route artifact rather than a departure.
The lesson worth keeping: all three Thera-derived readings were wrong, in both directions. Payroll evidence assembles the list; the principal confirms it.
Role designations
Every person page carries classifiers: (which human function they hold) and tier:
(how much of it they carry alone). Together they read as one phrase, like “lead captain”.
Taxonomy and rules: Role classifiers (the five human buckets).
Holding several classifiers is normal; that combination is the definition of seniority
here. Michael is owner of all five buckets, above every lead in every vertical and
every type of work.
Read as one phrase: <tier> <classifier>. Only lead counts as coverage.
Michael sits above the ladder at owner in all five buckets and is not a peer of the leads.
| Person | Designation | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Houck | owner, all five buckets | outranks every lead in every bucket; not counted as coverage |
| Blake Stewart | lead ambassador | sales, partnerships, AM, agency support, all businesses |
| Venus | independent ambassador | all client accounts except Jeffrey, incl. Houck’s |
| Reina Beltran | independent ambassador | Megaphone creator platform support, publishing, backup cover |
| Charlene | directed ambassador | Jeffrey replies, Maurice to churn |
| Ben Ornstein | lead referee | sole editorial gate |
| Blake Emal | lead captain | Megaphone |
| Tatem Lindner | lead captain | JOLT! |
| Emma Sivess | lead captain | Lore, white-label capacity only |
| Rafael Bruno | lead context-farmer | system architecture |
Inactive/former carry classifiers: [], n/a-former, tier: n/a. Inactive as of
2026-08-30: Mehul Jariwala (since 2026-08-01) and Angelica Beronilla (VA). Neither held
a lead role, so the coverage table below is unchanged by their departure.
Who belongs on this page
Only people whose page says affiliation: rye-valley. Client-side people and vendors have
pages in people/ because we work with them, but they are not team: no designation row, no
headcount, no coverage, no payroll pointer.
Corrected 2026-08-30 after the transcript backfill filed client-side people as Rye Valley contractors: Grig Richters is on Emil Barr’s consulting team, Jaclyn Yost worked for Big Human. Emil Barr himself is a consulting client (founder of Flashpass) and is never a Rye Valley decision maker.
Six further backfill-created pages were confirmed by Michael the same day as genuine Rye
Valley contractors, all inactive/former: Andrew Cheng, Andrew Safranko, Jacob Shipley,
Max Palmer, Rizwan Hameed, Sarah Parr. They carry affiliation: rye-valley with
affiliation_confirmed: 2026-08-30 and are excluded from active headcount and coverage.
Coverage by leads
Only leads count as coverage. Independents add capacity, directed people add throughput.
Michael is excluded by design: coverage asks what survives without the founder.
| Classifier | Leads | Read |
|---|---|---|
| ambassador | 1 | Blake S. alone; Venus and Reina independent, Charlene directed |
| captain | 3 | the only covered bucket |
| context-farmer | 1 | Rafael, and he is fully loaded on eng |
| referee | 1 | one deep |
| steward | 0 | owner only, permanently by design |
People pages
michael-houck.md: founder/ownerblake-emal.md: Megaphonetatem-lindner.md: JOLT!- TODO: add pages for remaining contractors as they become relevant to captured context.