What are some good examples of orgs that have optimized to stay small in terms of headcount relative to impact? How do you incentivize/reward that?
Early on, lack of resources is a forcing function, but as you start being successful, how do you leverage potential resources (capital, brand, etc.) without bloating headcount?
Snapchat. Less than 50 engineers like 4 years ago. Everyone I know who worked at snapchat is rich
Midjourney. Also @farcaster. Hiring senior skilled generalists with some specialist knowledge, learning culture and budget, and equity come to mind re: incentivize/reward
blur has like 6 people lol and rekt opensea gg the incentive and reward seem baked in? do a lot with a little, get a lot of reward
Another is 37 Signals now Basecamp. They have written well known books (Remote, Rework, Shape up), and built a few other services including Hey. And the CTO is DHH, the author of Ruby on Rails (whatever we think about it, all modern web framework stole from it, exactly as Dali would have done for art).