There is at least one extreme data point that says you can do an incredible amount with very few people: WhatsApp (~30 engineers @ 500M daily users) At that po

There is at least one extreme data point that says you can do an incredible amount with very few people: WhatsApp (~30 engineers @ 500M daily users) At that point WhatsApp had first class clients for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Nokia and Web + a server backend that scaled to 2B+ daily users. This doesn't happen by accident. WhatsApp founders created an environment where this could happen: - focusing on a few things (saying no a lot) - everyone on the team is highly capable - a work environment that allows people to focus on work (minimal meetings, good long term planning, fixing root causes vs constant firefighting...)