Delta Force > Army
Small teams will run circles around big ones under the right conditions.
Here are two of my favorite examples: Instagram had just 5 engineers when Facebook acquired it for $1B — roughly 8 million users per engineer. WhatsApp had 32 engineers serving 450 million users when they sold for $16B — about 14 million users per engineer.
These companies didn't win by assembling armies. They won by building small, elite teams with insane leverage.
That idea has become a core obsession of mine at Owner — and we've seen it play out firsthand.
We reached $10M in ARR with just 5 engineers building a massive product: website builder, online ordering, mobile apps, automated marketing, loyalty, and more. Entire companies have been built around each of these.
Most leaders feel pressure to grow their teams. More people feels like progress. But small teams of exceptional people consistently outperform large ones. Here's why:
Coordination costs scale badly. At 5 people, there are 10 communication paths. At 50, there are 1,225. Most organizations drown in this overhead.
Talent density changes the physics of execution. Exceptional people aren't incrementally better—they're 10x better. They move faster, make better decisions, and raise the bar for everyone. One average performer doesn't just slow output; it taxes the entire system.
High-trust teams don't need process. When people are capable and aligned, you can remove layers and approvals. Speed increases because friction disappears.
Small teams create ownership. Exceptional people want autonomy. Small teams naturally provide it — each person owns larger, end-to-end pieces of work.
Feedback loops stay tight. Most value is created through iteration: build, ship, observe, adjust. Small teams keep feedback loops tight. In large teams, decisions drift away from the work, signals arrive late, and progress slows from days to quarters.
Of course, small teams only work under the right conditions.
Below are the principles I've used at Owner to build teams that consistently run circles around much larger ones.
It all starts with the bar you set for talent.
The Navy SEALs are elite. To even be considered, you have to pass extreme physical and mental tests. Out of ~20,000 Navy candidates each year, only 1000 make it to SEAL training, and fewer than 200 graduate.
The Delta Force is the elite of the elite. Roughly 1,700 special forces members (SEALs, Rangers, etc) apply each year. Fewer than 30 make it to the "Operator Training Course". Of those, most drop out or fail — leaving ~6 people who make it through. That's ~0.35%.
Thats the type of talent bar we aim for at Owner. Our application-to-offer rate is ~0.22%. Given the choice, we would take the 6 Delta Force operators over 20,000 SEALs any day of the week.
We set that bar because small teams only work when every person is exceptional. Even one average performer can break the model:
Everyone is on the critical path. Performance doesn't average out. One weak link becomes a system-wide bottleneck.
Judgement replaces process. Small teams trade rules, reviews, and layers for trust and independent decision-making. That only works if judgment is consistently excellent.
Performance compounds. Exceptional people raise standards for everyone around them. Mediocrity does the opposite — it drags the system toward the mean and forces process to compensate.
If you want to build a Delta Force, every individual must be truly exceptional.
Here's an example from Owner: one of our early engineers solo-built our restaurant mobile app generator in under three months. Today, it powers 6,000+ restaurant apps across the U.S. At a typical company, that same initiative would take 8–12 months and a team of 6–8 engineers.
That same engineer — alongside 3 other elite engineers — then built our Point of Sale from zero to live in a real restaurant in under 8 weeks. At a typical company, this would easily take a year or more.
Extraordinary companies require extraordinary people. Everything else is downstream.
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