Even if you're little you can do a lot
Small teams have always been preferable to large teams. See Jeff Bezos “two pizza teams” theory etc. This is something that we all instinctively understand. Small teams move fast, big teams move slowly. It’s just that, in the old world, outside of a few wild exceptions, it wasn’t feasible to do a lot with a small team. Size, speed and ambition were a set of difficult trade offs.
But tokens kind of change everything. In the future (if not already), we’ll ultimately have to decide, for any given project, will we throw human calories or tokens at it. But as I wrote back in August of 2025, despite the headlines, AI was never about efficiency, it is about ambition. AI is about using token leverage to enable human teams to unlock the courage to tackle bigger and scarier projects.
There are many, many open questions (governance, security, layoffs, hallucinations, job disruption, quality, “workslop”), but there can be little doubt, we’ve likely passed peak “huge-team” forever. Will tech companies ever be this big again? Maybe the AI companies will (ironically), but for the rest, small and mighty seems the way to go in 2026 and beyond.
My kids have been binge watching Tim Minchin’s (amazing) Matilda the Musical over the past few months, and I’m reminded of this great line (and recurring motif) from one of the main songs “Naughty”.
“Even if you’re little you can do a lot, you shouldn’t let a little thing like little stop you”.