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It’s the issue of hypergrowth or ‘blitzscaling’. Plenty of companies will deliver just as much, if not more, with a 30 person strong team, as they would with 6
by ljm 7y ago
It’s the issue of hypergrowth or ‘blitzscaling’.
Plenty of companies will deliver just as much, if not more, with a 30 person strong team, as they would with 600, or 10,000.
But a thirty person strong team isn’t going to get a multi-million cash injection unless they plug it all into a swanky office and an ever-growing wage bill.
I greatly admire Basecamp and it’s founders, DHH and Jason Fried, for completely bucking this trend. And they’re as successful as ever.
- avip 7y agoWhatsapp, possibly the exception that makes the rule, had $1.5B valuation and $50M vc influx with a tiny team.
- PeterStuer 7y agoBecause they had the user's phone numbers. This seemingly little thing is what made them valuable.
- chrisyeh 7y agoInstagram reached 100 million users and sold for over $1 billion with a 6-person team (they had just hired a few more people when they sold). Investors don't care how many people you have; they care about how fast the business is growing.
- chrisyeh 7y agoAs one of the co-creators of blitzscaling, it's important to note that we're careful in the book to say that most businesses shouldn't blitzscale. Basecamp is a great example of how bootstrapping can work. You can also listen to the story of MailChimp on the Masters of Scale podcast.