Thread by @nathanbarry

I'm fascinated by companies that have used leverage to achieve incredible scale in a very efficient way.

From dating apps to online games here are 8 companies that hit a massive success with surprisingly small teams:

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1. The two founders of Streamyard bootstrapped to $12M in ARR without any employees. They reached $30M ARR with 19 employees before selling to Hopin for $250 million.

2. The popular game Among Us reached 500 million active users with only 4 employees.

3. Instagram was acquired by Facebook for $1 billion with only 13 team members.

Everyone thought it was insanely overvalued at the time, but now it will go down as one of the greatest acquisitions of all time.

4. CoderPad reached $4m in annual revenue with just 4 employees. They've since raised funding to scale the company.

5. WhatsApp had only 55 team members when Facebook bought them for $19 billion. An astounding $345 million per employee!

6. Marcus Frind started dating site Plenty of Fish in 2003 to improve his resume. By 2008 it was netting him $10 million per year as the only employee, and he was part time!

Later he scaled a team to 75 people before selling to Match Group for $575 million.

7. SEO research software Ahrefs hit more than $50M in annual recurring revenue with just 50 employees.

8. While far from the same scale as the companies above, @ConvertKit is at $28.6 million in revenue with 68 people on the team. Our mission to provide financial independence to everyone on our team (and the broader creator community) means we'll keep using leverage to scale.

What other companies would you add? Reply or quote tweet the thread with your favorite examples:

9. Eric Barone built Stardew Valley as a way to add to his resume & get a job after graduating with a CS degree. He did everything himself with no employees.

4 years after launch it had sold over 10 million copies across all platforms, estimated at over $150 million in revenue.