My experience is that small, dedicated teams of high-performing individuals are the only way to build tools like these. The level of architectural and design co

My experience is that small, dedicated teams of high-performing individuals are the only way to build tools like these. The level of architectural and design coherence starts to decrease at 5 people, and falls like a rock beyond 10-20. The key problem is building a firewall so that such people can focus. The *organizational* problems there are hard. If you have a firewall around five people, you can't tell if: - They're sitting at home drinking beer and watching cat videos - Are developing the world's fastest database Which leads to meetings, presentations, funding proposals, and so on. Which, in turn, leads to the need for large teams.