I read a lot of magazines that profile entrepreneurs. I often notice something along the lines of “We are planning to be a very big company”. And it’s sad. Of course, folks at startups are very intrinsically driven, zealous to start a revolution, and become the next big thing. But what turns me off is when they assume being big means hiring people by the hundreds, having an enormous office, and being physically big. Why do you have be a very big company to be very successful?
You don’t. You can have a dedicated team of 10 self-driven and passionate people, make products that reach millions, have a sweet balance in your company’s bank account, and be widely known in the industry for whatever it is that you do. Be it designing t-shirts, making cool software, delivering news, information or whatever. I mean, do you really want to be another IBM or Microsoft, or Sun, where any new idea or prototype has to go through 10 levels of product management, perpetual intervention of software docs people, and tons of stupid feature requests/downgrades and after 2 years you’re finally shipping that little text reader?
Don’t roll down that path. Secret to smart hiring? Don’t hire. You can be really big by staying really small. It’s way more fun. It also means you will have a lot of cash to spend on bigger, cooler things, and it’ll keep your small, dedicated team happy.