Small teams of exceptional people beat large teams of average ones

I used to work at a bunch of the big tech companies and I always felt that we could fire 90% of the people and we would move faster because the best people wouldn't have all these distractions.

It was almost never... It was always easier to work with a smaller team, very high quality people than with a very large team of more average people. It's almost like it's always faster and better output when you have a much more smaller team.

I strongly, strongly believe that small teams of successful people can drive a lot more impact than larger teams of mediocre people. And so I strongly believe you have to design a system where you're able to reward 10X operators with 10X the comp.

Each new researcher that you add is actually a net productivity loss for the research group unless that person is up-leveling everyone else in such a profound way that it increases the efficiency. If you just add somebody who's going to go and tackle some completely different research direction, you now have to share your GPUs with that person and everyone else is now slower on their experiments.

I was trying to compose almost like an organism of strengths and then minimize the conflicts. That management team for the most part was the same management team from day one when we had nothing to $20 billion.

Keith Coleman, Product Lead for Community Notes at X (formerly Twitter), is discussing how working under Elon Musk has influenced his approach to lean team building.

If I were to start a company in that company, it would be even leaner than I would've made it before. I've been amazed with just how much the team is able to accomplish with a small group and I think because of a small group-

'The thing you're looking for' refers to achieving product-market fit or breakthrough success with your product.

I see the opposite more true where people hold on to small teams too long and then you, either takes forever to get to the thing you're looking for.