Staying lean is a deliberate product strategy. Bigger teams may build more features and go-to-market motions, but smaller, focused teams are better at creating simpler, more intuitive user experiences. Focus, not capital, is the key constraint for simplicity.
Related Insights
Resist hiring quickly after finding traction. Instead, 'hire painfully slowly' and assemble an initial 'MVP Crew' — a small, self-sufficient team with all skills needed to build, market, and sell the product end-to-end. This establishes a core DNA of speed and execution before scaling.
The V0 team operates with minimal product management oversight, empowering product-minded engineers (often ex-founders) to make 95% of product decisions directly. This sacrifices potentially "perfect" choices for a dramatic increase in development velocity.
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.
Founders often start scrappy out of necessity and dream of lavish resources. However, once successful, many realize that small, lean, and scrappy teams are more effective. This creates a paradox where the most successful entrepreneurs intentionally revert to the resource-constrained mindset they once tried to escape.
When products offer too many configurations, it often signals that leaders lack the conviction to make a decision. This fear of being wrong creates a confusing user experience. It's better to ship a simple, opinionated product, learn from being wrong, and then adjust, rather than shipping a convoluted experience.
Drawing from experience at big tech, Surge AI's founder believes large organizations slow down top performers with distractions. By building a super-small, elite team, companies can achieve more with less overhead, a principle proven by Surge's own success.
The AMP team is small and agile, bypassing traditional processes like code reviews to ship 15 times a day. They leverage Sourcegraph's customer trust, revenue, and platform teams (e.g., security), allowing the core team to focus purely on product velocity and radical innovation.
Instead of debating individual features, establish a clear "perspective" for your product. Artist's perspective as a "push-based product for quick insights" makes it easy to reject requests that don't align, like building an in-house video hosting tool. This aligns the entire organization and simplifies the roadmap.
Gamma scaled to a $2B valuation with only 50 people by innovating on org design, not just product. They prioritize hiring generalists over specialists and use a 'player-coach' model instead of a traditional management layer. This keeps the team lean, agile, and close to the actual work.
