While many US media companies view news as a burden, Bell Media leverages its local and national news divisions as a key strategic differentiator. Reaching 98% of Canadians monthly, news provides a level of daily relevance and a direct audience relationship that global platforms like Netflix cannot replicate.

Contradicting the common startup goal of scaling headcount, the founders now actively question how small they can keep their team. They see a direct link between adding people, increasing process, and slowing down, leveraging a small, elite team as a core part of their high-velocity strategy.

In fast-paced environments like AI, the opportunity cost of lengthy internal debates over good-enough options is enormous. A founder mindset prioritizes rapid execution and learning over achieving perfect consensus, creating a significant competitive advantage through speed.

When competing against a resourceful incumbent, a startup's key advantage is speed. Bizzabo outmaneuvered its rival during the pandemic by launching a virtual solution in weeks, not months. This agility allows challenger brands to seize market shifts that larger players are too slow to address.

In today's volatile market, speed and agility have replaced sheer size as the primary competitive advantage. As stated by Rupert Murdoch, it's 'the fast beating the slow.' Startups often win by rapidly responding to customer needs, allowing them to outmaneuver slower, larger incumbents.

Countering the common Canadian anxiety over talent 'brain drain' to the US or UK, Bell Media's president states he doesn't care where creatives live. The focus is solely on collaborating with top Canadian talent, whether they are in Toronto or Los Angeles, effectively globalizing the talent pool.

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.

Despite fewer resources, smaller enterprises often succeed with ABM where large tech fails. Their success stems from faster alignment between sales and marketing, fewer layers of bureaucracy, and the agility to create and execute campaigns quickly without being bogged down by silos.

Former Biogen R&D head Al Sandrock defines the agility of a small company not just as speed, but as the ability to make decisions by informally gathering key people in the hallway, bypassing the need to schedule formal meetings. This contrasts with large organizations where many more people and committees are necessarily involved.