"When you go to the Valley now, and when you go to China now, they are working seven days a week in the fastest-growing companies," says 20VC founder Harry Stebbings.
Having more people always adds overhead. It’s not only software developers.
You don’t need to have two developers working on the same piece of code, you can have each one working on a feature. And different teams can develop different projects/products. If a project takes 1 year to complete but you want an output of 2 projects per year, you don’t need to overwork your current employees. You can hire a new team so there are 2 simultaneous projects being worked on at the same time.
Instagram: When Facebook acquired Instagram in 2012, the company had only 13 employees and was valued at $1 billion.
WhatsApp: When Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, the company had around 55 employees, but it had previously raised funding at a valuation of $1.5 billion with a much smaller team.
Duo Security: In 2018, Cisco acquired Duo Security for $2.35 billion. At the time of acquisition, Duo had around 10 employees.
Nutanix: While not exactly a small startup at the time of valuation, Nutanix was valued at $1.2 billion in 2013 with around 10-15 employees.
(disclaimer: I sourced these from gpt and have not fact checked them)
Having more people always adds overhead. It’s not only software developers.
You don’t need to have two developers working on the same piece of code, you can have each one working on a feature. And different teams can develop different projects/products. If a project takes 1 year to complete but you want an output of 2 projects per year, you don’t need to overwork your current employees. You can hire a new team so there are 2 simultaneous projects being worked on at the same time.
I assumed that the VC is talking about small startups, the sort that have a dozen employees and just one project.
Can those be valued at 1Bn?
Ok, yes, there are these examples:
(disclaimer: I sourced these from gpt and have not fact checked them)