A small company with big profits

When I was a young entrepreneur, I always equated success with the team size of the company. 

Company size of 5? Who cares?

Company size of 10? Small potatoes.

Company size of 20? Still a nothing burger.

Company size of 50? Maybe they have something going on, but still too small to matter.

Company size of 100? Okay, maybe this has a chance to be big.

Company size of several hundred people? Now it’s a real business.

And so on.

My mind has completely changed on this. I care absolutely nothing about the team size and in fact, the bigger the team size, the less appealing.

I want a small team, but a big profit.

I want what Instagram had when it sold to Facebook for $1 billion dollars: a team size of 13.

Today, Podia has a team size of 28, down from a peak of 33, but the size of the team is not something I’m looking to grow.

What I’m looking to grow is the revenue per employee.

In the tech industry, Facebook is leading the pack with $1.9m per employee per year. I don’t think that’s unrealistic for Podia to strive for. Facebook turned 20 years old this past February 2024, and Podia is only turning 10 this upcoming November 2024. We still have 10 years to get there.

Why is having a small team so appealing to me?

Communication and collaboration really start to break down as you grow. You have to work really hard to keep everyone in the loop, create a whole bunch of new processes, and spend a ton of time on company upkeep.

Podia does really well at these things despite being over 20 people, but we’ve had to work really hard to make it function.

A big part of me thinks how much more productive and successful we could be if we redirected all of that time toward simply serving our users.

So while there was a time when I even presented a deck to our team about what we might look like at 100+ employees, a large team size with poor revenue per employee and low profit margin is quite the opposite of what 40 year-old Spencer is looking for today.

Do more with less, keep team size small, and grow profits.