[scubakid]

I think there's a certain type of engineer that actively prefers working in a small team where you can make an outsized impact and wear many hats. I'm one of them lol.

I wonder if you could bring on just one really good dev who matches that description vs scaling up to a larger team. In many cases, a very small team of A+ players can beat a large team of B players.

Although it sounds like you're saying marketing/distribution may have played a larger role in your trajectory? In hindsight, do you think focusing your team-building efforts on the marketing side would have been a better strategy?

[speleding]

Yes, I agree, one or two good engineers should easily be enough, and preferable to a large team. In between having programmers on staff I ended up doing most of it myself. It was not for want of trying, but even getting someone to apply is hard when good engineers were getting dozens of emails and calls from recruiters a week (back then). In the end, doing too much things by myself caused my company to be a bit slower with design updates, not enough attention to marketing, etc. And although there are way more people available who claim they can do marketing, finding a good one turned out to be just as hard. But some things, like well-funded competitors appearing that outspend you on Google Ads, are not under your control. I'm still happy with the end-result though, it's a great life style business.