[Theodores]

$40 million is admirable. You could do that with a flat team where everyone knows everyone else and operate out the back of an established retail business.

Scaling that up would mean having three tiers of management, scores of interns, nobody knowing the names of anyone in the warehouse, the product team not talking to the customer care team, whole departments dealing with accounts things, it just goes on. You could have 100-250 extra people without noticing, banks to pay off, vast premises to rent, a huge marketing bill, considerable IT infrastructure and so on.

This would be fine if you really were that smart and that good. Why, you could be the next Amazon.com, even put them out of business. What is alarming is that people think that way, they let greed and arrogance cloud their judgement. It is like a disease.

[ericcholis]

> product team not talking to the customer care team

I couldn't agree more. Dare I say it, we've got an "open" floor plan for our customer care and product teams. It helps immensely when you can place a customer on hold and ask a product guy a question without emailing, chatting for calling.

[JabavuAdams]

How do you deal with phone calls disrupting product work? E.g. I've run in to few situations that kill production / craft-person style work faster than having someone on the phone, nearby.

[ericcholis]

Oddly, it all kinds of works out. The only people in the open floor plan are customer service reps and product managers.

[JabavuAdams]

Ah, ok. That makes a lot of sense.

[dohertyjf]

This!