Size doesn't matter

A lot of newbie startup founders ask my opinion about how many employees do they need in that hard phase between product inception to pre-profitability.  More specifically, most of the questions are always focused on product development teams.  My answer is inevitably,  smaller than you think.  Sure, there are lots of examples where there are large infrastructure plays where you'll need a large dev team.  The majority of Internet ventures can get to scale with a very small team. 

The classic "small" dev organization in startups consisted of 2-3 devs, 1 program manager, 1 product manager, a QA person and either a VP of engineering or CTO (who is hopefully the founder).  So, 7 was appropriately scrappy when  building a business.  Nowadays, you can get away with no program manager and product manager as long as the CEO and/or the CTO can direct business and technical direction.  I think a team of 5 is just fine. 

I am blown away when I hear about startups hiring dev management in the beginning of their businesses.  I typically have never found that you need to have any management layer between the CTO and the people doing the work. Keep the team size small.  You will be amazed at the returns that you get by doing so.  Startup founders from big companies typically fall back to their waterfall style development
styles in their team sizes and launching product.  Just about everyone now develops product in a Scrum-style development process.   I joke that at Mpire we are so scrappy that we've implemented the CRUM process.

You get faster, more focused product delivery with smaller teams.

Comments

[Marcelo Calbucci]

I couldn't agree more.

What really surprises me is the number of Business Professors, Investors and (gasp) entrepreneurs that still have the mentality that you need 2-3 years, millions of dollars, 20+ people and a lot of other resources to build a successful business.

I think the key observation is that any business grows with experimentation. If you can try 4-6 key ideas that will slingshot your business in 12 months, is way better than trying 1 idea and putting all the resources behind it.

It becomes less a matter of luck and more of how fast can you learn, adapt and react.