There is at least one extreme data point that says you can do an incredible amount with very few people: WhatsApp (~30 engineers @ 500M daily users)
At that point WhatsApp had first class clients for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Nokia and Web + a server backend that scaled to 2B+ daily users.
This doesn't happen by accident. WhatsApp founders created an environment where this could happen:
- focusing on a few things (saying no a lot)
- everyone on the team is highly capable
- a work environment that allows people to focus on work (minimal meetings, good long term planning, fixing root causes vs constant firefighting...)
At that point WhatsApp had first class clients for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, Nokia and Web + a server backend that scaled to 2B+ daily users.
This doesn't happen by accident. WhatsApp founders created an environment where this could happen:
- focusing on a few things (saying no a lot)
- everyone on the team is highly capable
- a work environment that allows people to focus on work (minimal meetings, good long term planning, fixing root causes vs constant firefighting...)