21–30 of 287 posts
The book Loonshots by Safi Bahcall describes this phenomena quite well. There's a "phase transition" of incentives at around 150 people that can be fatal to many organizations. The secret sauce is how a startup goes past this headcount. Ideally many software companies quite honestly don't need more than 150 people!
It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…
It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…
This is an intriguing idea. I wonder if the paradigm has a name or a following?
"And as tools (especially AI) get better, the number of users a small team can support increases. Founders of the future may not need to worry so much about these scaling pains, and work may become fun for everyone" Except fewer of your users will have jobs because the AI multiplier means smaller teams. So your addressable matter will shrink. So another race to the bottom? I'm sure we'll work it out right..
If only people could think from outside themselves for two seconds to assess technological impacts like you just have.
Reminds me of the Mass Effect games, where AI is essentially outlawed (because they revolted against the humans of course, but I can picture less scifi-ish reasons in the real world). I'm sure they're still allowed to use pathfinding algorithms and such, so they probably defined a level of net negative (to society) AI and just regulated that. Starships for example are manually piloted (surely with intelligent support systems and basic auto pilots) IIRC.
It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…
This is what the author suggests towards the end of the piece, and points out some issues with it.
It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…
I think the best way to scale is to build processes that reinforce the traits you want in a team, and hire managers who understand teams are collections of unique individuals, as is the manager. The manager should be free to manage their people in a way that optimizes delivery and reduces churn. Between teams there should be a very high bar for quality of communication and delivery. The culture of the organization should be built around respect for each person hired and a relentless focus on ensuring individuals end up in teams that they are effective in and are therefore maximally effective as teams.
It almost feels like the "efficiencies of scale" you get from large organisations (e.g. specialised people for recruitment, people matters, quality assurance, user research etc.) are not really efficiencies. Perhaps it's better to grow the organisation by repeatedly cloning the smallest effective team you ever had, rather than creating a more "efficient" organisational structure. How those "mini-companies" communicat…
Now, if it wasn't for all that, there's still the problem that, from personal experience, most employees don't invest as much energy as a founder would - which is perfectly understandable. As the founder to employee ratio gets smaller, you find yourself hiring three people to do a job you could do yourself, just to make sure it gets done reliably and timely. In a smaller startup, early hires are more similar to founders because they're close to them and stand to gain a lot if the company succeeds and grows. For employee #213, they sell 40 hours of work per week and their fixed salary is all they really stand to get out of it.
So while I like the romantic idea of having a large company comprised of multiple independent startups, I haven't seen that work and I can barely picture it work :( One can get somewhat close to this with the right organisational structure (e.g. sacrificing efficiencies of scale for team autonomy where feasible), but it's not even close to the same thing.
> Most startups needlessly accelerate their corporatization by copying the processes of larger companies, usually by poaching managers from large companies who bring their playbooks with them. This is painfully on point.
> But no incentive is as good as a fat chunk of equity + the power to influence its value. Meanwhile your sales team colleagues get their incentives paid out right away, in the very next quarter, and instead of equity lottery tickets it’s just cash. I’d like to see engineering get some of the types of cash incentives that sales teams get. Perhaps the only reason they don’t is because it’s too hard to come up with met…
"And as tools (especially AI) get better, the number of users a small team can support increases. Founders of the future may not need to worry so much about these scaling pains, and work may become fun for everyone" Except fewer of your users will have jobs because the AI multiplier means smaller teams. So your addressable matter will shrink. So another race to the bottom? I'm sure we'll work it out right..
Let me try this exercise: Except more of your users will have jobs because the AI multiplier means new opportunities to provide cheaper services available to more businesses, new companies that weren't economical before will be founded, entire new markets and whole new professions will be created. So your addressable market will exponentially grow. So another bull run? I'm sure we will work it out right.