[laxatives]

Seems accurate, though I think his point is that the overall team quality is decreasing instead of increasing. On the flipside, keeping a strong team probably means the team is always much smaller than it could be at any given stage. IMO this is well worth it and I strongly prefer a tiny team. But it could potentially decrease a valuation where company size/number of employees (especially engineers) is taken into account.

[gl338]

It also depends a lot on the company's strategy. If you are building a complex product then a small, highly qualified team makes sense. If your product is basic and requires a lot of customer success, you might want to hire junior devs or non-devs to do basic work (thus growing your team, but saving the senior dev time for more complex tasks).

[x0x0]

Also, growing your own senior devs is something responsible companies do.