Sometimes less really is more, especially when it’s experienced.
By Marc Boudria, Chief Innovation Officer, BetterEngineer
A large swath of my career has been spent in R&D. It's a world where the team is everything. In R&D, the idea of “small teams doing big things” isn’t revolutionary; it’s just Tuesday. Working with limited funding is the norm, and rather than a handicap, it becomes a creative constraint. When you have a highly talented team, constraints turn into catalysts. The magic of small teams isn’t just about headcount—it’s about capability, chemistry, and clarity of purpose.
There’s a reason why some of the most groundbreaking startups begin in garages, not corporate campuses. Large organizations often confuse scale with effectiveness. They build up headcount instead of building momentum.
Meanwhile, small senior teams—with the right mix of experience, autonomy, and grit—can move faster, pivot smarter, and deliver more meaningful outcomes. “Senior,” in this context, has nothing to do with age. It’s about breadth of experience, deep understanding of process, and the ability to learn quickly and execute autonomously.
A Harvard Business Review study found that smaller teams outperform larger ones in innovation-focused work because they reduce communication overhead, minimize misalignment, and foster greater accountability.
My own personal experiences attest to the results of their study. Our 5-person 5&D team accomplished multiple amazing builds, public experiences, and multiple patents over one year, versus a 30-person team that was working on releasing a single product. Why? Because our team was designed for the purpose of momentum. We had deep generalists, aligned goals, and zero dead weight. Every person was an owner. Every person could pivot without permission as long as it didn't stray from the end goal.
Something else to keep in mind. Parkinson’s Law, a principle coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson, states that “work expands to fill the time allotted.” The same is often true of teams: the more people involved, the more meetings, dependencies, and coordination overhead you create. A 30-person team doesn’t necessarily get work done faster than a 5-person team; they often just spend more time talking about the work.
If you want to see this philosophy in action, look no further than the world of game development. Game creation is arguably one of the most complex forms of software engineering. It requires real-time performance, cross-disciplinary integration, and pixel-perfect experience delivery. And yet, some of the most beloved indie games (like Stardew Valley, Undertale, and Celeste) were built by teams of fewer than five.
I’ve worked on projects that range from aerospace to entertainment, and I’ll tell you this: Space is hard, but gaming is harder. That’s not hyperbole. In Space, your constraints are clearer, albeit with extreme consequences to everything you do, or don't do. In games, you’re building a visual style, creating emotional resonance, designing progressively disclosed information and logic, and striking a mechanical balance simultaneously, also with little room for error. Just like in Space, you only get one chance to launch and deploy correctly.
There is no shortage of examples of small teams doing great things. The Wright brothers were just two people in a shed with some land. Stripe, the fintech unicorn, famously had a two-person founding team that built its first MVP and landed its first users, launching a now multi-billion-dollar company. Same story with WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook for $19B with only 55 employees total at the time.
Small teams only work if the people on them are built for it. You can’t hide on a team of five. You either deliver or you drag everyone down.
That’s why autonomy, context-sharing, and trust are foundational. Every team member must be able to work independently while still keeping others informed. Trust doesn’t just mean believing others will show up; it means knowing they’ll anticipate what you need and be ready for handoffs without delay.
In the military, elite squads like the Navy SEALs operate in tight units because trust and fluid communication outweigh numerical superiority. The same logic applies to elite product teams—tight formations, high coordination, fast execution.
Communication pathways in small teams are short. That’s a massive efficiency gain. Fewer hops mean faster feedback and tighter iteration loops. Preparation time, often invisible in large orgs, becomes frictionless in small ones.
There’s a line small teams can't cross: scale. You can build a brilliant MVP with six people, but you can't support a global user base without additional muscle. That’s where many orgs stumble; they either scale too soon or try to scale without a thoughtful strategy.
Scaling isn’t about more people; it’s about spreading complexity in a sustainable way. Sometimes that means dividing into smaller autonomous pods. Sometimes it means creating a strong support infrastructure. But the key is knowing what phase you’re in.
For example, localizing an app for 30 countries requires linguistic expertise, regulatory knowledge, customer support, and ongoing QA. You might be able to launch that application initially with a small core, but sustaining it at scale means growing intelligently.
Successful companies recognize when to shift from small-team velocity to cross-team orchestration. They often combine in-house veterans with external specialists (via partners or staff augmentation) to flex the team without breaking cohesion.
Creating great technology is about finding the right balance between your dream state, your available talent, your required scale, and your financial runway. Small teams are your accelerators. Large teams are your engines. You need both, but at the right time.
Don’t start by hiring dozens of people. Start by having an honest conversation about what you're trying to achieve, who you already have, and what kind of partner might help you get there.
At BetterEngineer, we’ve spent decades building the teams that build breakthrough products. If you’re wondering what kind of team configuration makes the most sense for your next move, let’s talk. You don’t need more people. You need the right ones.