Ask HN: I'm looking for examples of one-person startups that scaled big

[bookbinder]

Imgur, Pinboard and PlentofFish come to mind. But I would like to find more examples. (I would appreciate links to relevant articles/interviews.)

I want to better understand why some startups able to grow traffic without hiring staff (whereas other startups seem to hire an army of people from day one).

[joewrong]

Distrokid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DistroKid

[segmondy]

Money, if you bootstrap, you don't have any money to hire staff. If you raise funds, you can hire an army.

[bookbinder]

Yeah, but companies like Imgur and PlentofFish reach millions of users without hiring anyone. So for similar companies that do hire, I'm wondering what exactly are all of those people doing all day. Is it just bs/busy work? Or are of the founders of Imgur, PlentofFish, etc. so clever and capable...they're simply more productive than a team of people.