I read a very interesting theory in a great book called the Sovereign Individual. The optimum firm size will go down as the cost of communications goes down. B

I read a very interesting theory in a great book called the Sovereign Individual. The optimum firm size will go down as the cost of communications goes down. Back when messages had to be delivered on horseback, you wanted all your people in one office building. But now you can send an email in 10 seconds for $0, so it becomes practical to have many spread-out firms cooperating. Obviously this is not the only factor, but still. There's another interesting idea in Marvin Minsky's Society of Mind: when many agents with approximately the same processing power cooperate, the higher-level agents must necessarily be out of touch with the details, and will make big policy decisions that look stupid to many of the lower-level agents who have more of the details but less of the big picture. His agents were all part of the same mind, but it seems eerily similar to politics and big-company management. So maybe startups should try to hire people with startup experience from the same industry since big-picture politicking is less valuable to a startup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_optimal_firm_size https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socially_optimal_firm_size