Kushner insists on a small team not just for investments, but across the entire firm (legal, finance). By hiring '10x people' in every role and giving them full transparency and autonomy, everyone feels authorship over decisions, breaking the traditional hierarchy where only the investment team matters.

Merchant bankers operate on the belief that "lawyers like to complicate matters; we like to simplify them." Echoing Charlie Munger's advice to "not let lawyers kill deals," they prioritize trust and verbal agreements. This allows them to execute transactions with a speed and simplicity that would be impossible under a more legalistic, risk-averse framework.

Unlike bureaucratic banks, small, founder-led HFT firms have flat structures that enable extreme agility. A trader can use a personal credit card to buy a faster server and deploy it in days, a process that would take a large bank over six months to approve and execute.

Firms like the Rothschilds intentionally minimize written records, operating under the motto "we must not let in daylight upon magic." This isn't poor practice; it's a strategy to maintain secrecy, flexibility, and an information advantage. They view their business as an abstract art, not a replicable science, and protect their methods accordingly.

The firm avoids the pitfalls of scale by organizing into small, autonomous investment groups (e.g., crypto, infra). This design, inspired by early Hewlett-Packard, provides the speed of a small team with the power of a large institution's brand and capital.

Robinhood intentionally decouples compensation from an employee's org size. This counters the typical corporate incentive for 'empire building.' By disproportionately rewarding people who achieve high impact with the smallest possible team, they foster a culture of lean efficiency and focus.

A merchant banker secured a £200,000 credit line for a ship owner in three minutes over the phone, without any contracts. This highlights their core advantage: leveraging long-term trust and reputation to provide rapid, personal service that large, bureaucratic banks cannot match. Their business runs on confidence, not collateral.

To balance agility and scale, Jamie Dimon structures teams like Navy SEALs. Small, dedicated groups are fully authorized to complete a mission, preventing bureaucratic drag. However, they use common equipment and platforms, avoiding the chaos of total decentralization.

To maintain agility while scaling, A16Z models itself after the original Hewlett-Packard, operating as a series of small, autonomous groups (e.g., crypto, infra). This structure blends the power and resources of a large organization with the speed and ownership of a small one.