Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham argues AI will let startups scale past traditional productivity bottlenecks

@paulg dunbar's number has been sitting there like 'i told you' for 50 years

@paulg 150 is Dunbar’s Number: https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com/laws/dunbars-number/

@paulg insightful! whats the best number?

@paulg What is the effect that causes this above this threshold? Do you have an essay on it?

I think teams of 3-15 will benefit the most. They will be able to scale much and earn more, or get paid and do very little work. There is also other benefit, it might and probably will that some will hit ceiling due to geographical or profitability, ambitious ones will make another company in different industry and hit the ground running fast due to understanding how to use tech properly.

@paulg The 150 wall is really ugly. It'll also help because pre-AI, a lot of enterprise startups hit 150 just as their first big wave of large contracts were up for renewal. Very hard times...

@paulg I think this post is a reference to the book The Mythical Man-Month.

@paulg But i think Ai is worsening the brain of human

@paulg Anything that means you don't need to hire middle management.

@paulg While AI scales the output, it doesn't scale human culture or trust...once you cross 150 people without a solid cultural foundation, the group will still fracture, AI or not🤔

@paulg the 10 person line is real

seeing more ai native teams try to stay lean and ship fast before the org stuff kicks in

@paulg As a founder working on blockchain + AI, I have come to understand that PMF is actually really rare, particularly in a nascent tech sector.

I think that having more shots on goal is the #1 benefit I have experienced with AI so far.

Curious how you think about this from a sales perspective.

I've noticed enterprise buyers are still pretty skeptical of small teams, even if they're shipping way above their weight class. Feels like AI has changed what's possible, but not necessarily how companies evaluate vendors.

@paulg 2 is prime

@paulg makes sense. why would someone great want to be 150th person in the company?

@paulg True, useful potential of small companies per unit of time increases by many orders of magnitude before they cross these lines

@paulg Dunbar number right ?

@paulg In any team, more than 10 people is already one too many.

@paulg but only with right using of AI

@paulg A team of 3 should be able to build a bn dollar business, you say