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- The $100M companies with barely any employees
The $100M companies with barely any employees
Small teams, massive revenue
These numbers broke my brain:
→ Cursor: $100M ARR in 21 months with just 20 people
→ Midjourney: $200M in 2 years with 10 people
→ Lovable: $10M in 2 months with 15 people
Cursor and Midjourney are now on a $500M pace.
This isn’t normal.
It’s a new era, and the old rules don’t apply anymore.
Here’s what’s happening:
The cost of intelligence is collapsing.
What used to take full-stack teams now takes one sharp operator with the right workflows.Headcount is no longer a moat.
Execution speed, automation, and leverage are. AI is the great equalizer.One person can now do the work of 10.
The highest ROI skill? Knowing how to scale yourself without scaling your team.Business is becoming a video game.
You’re the player.
AI is your power-up.
And the cost to play is dropping fast.
So what do you do?
Start building leverage, not overhead:
Use Lindy to spin up AI agents that automate ops and communication
Prototype ideas instantly with Replit, Bolt, or Lovable
Create a business command center with Claude Code Interpreter + Multi-Chain Prompts
The companies winning right now don’t have the biggest teams.
The future belongs to the smartest companies.
And the founders?
They aren’t managing. They’re compounding.
To playing the game at a higher level,
Eric Siu
P.S.
1 - We’re hiring AI-forward performance ad creative strategists, AI-forward SEOs and paid media people, AI short form creators, AI automation interns, and more.. If you’re interested, apply at our Careers page.
2 - We launched ClickFlow to help automate and scale SEO. We’re giving away 10,000 words for free - sign up for the waitlist at the link.
3 - Interested in creating 1:1 personalized LinkedIn ads in minutes instead of weeks? Sign up for the Karrot.ai waitlist.
4 - If you want to grow faster using the power of AI, my agency Single Grain is offering free marketing plans to Leveling Up newsletter subscribers, check it out here.
5 - For more in-depth marketing content, check out my Leveling Up YouTube channel
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