Paul Graham said, “when people visit your startup, they should be surprised how few people you have.”

A Company’s Social Contract With Its Labor Supply

impressive things accomplished by small teams.

• Instagram  had 13 employees when they were acquired by Facebook for $1 billion. They had 30 millions users at the time. Source


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• Mojang  (the company behind Minecraft) had 37 employees when they were acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 billion. At that time, Mojang had revenue of about $290 mil

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The unbundling of the firm has been in flight for decades. Increased access to global labor markets brought us outsourcing. The proliferation of cloud computing and mobile took this a step further, making it possible to externalize an increasing number of key operational functions and allowing for more asset-light business models.