The smallest serious company

For most of business history, ambition required organisational mass. More customers meant more people, more coordination, and more management.

AI weakens that relationship.

A small team can now command capabilities that once required entire departments. This does not mean every company should remain tiny. It means headcount is becoming a less useful measure of seriousness.

The interesting question is how much clarity, judgement, and technological leverage a team can concentrate without creating unnecessary complexity.

I suspect some of the most consequential companies of the next decade will look surprisingly small from the outside. Their advantage will not be doing less. It will be carrying less organisational weight while doing far more.