Why small teams can build big businesses

This isn’t just about working smarter

There’s a familiar story about successful startups. That the founders worked insane hours, outworked everyone around them, and ground their way to success through sheer effort.

Sometimes that’s true. But it’s not the real reason a small team can build a big business.

The real reason is structural. It’s about how digital products are built, how they deliver value, and how that creates a different relationship between effort and output.

Once you see it, you’ll notice it everywhere — in why certain businesses grow faster than their team size should allow, in how a two-person company competes with a hundred-person one, and in how to make decisions that compound over time instead of just getting things done today.

Building on what you already know

In the la...