The $1B Startup Team of 2025: Just 5 People, Powered by AI - By Greg isenberg
1 engineer. 1 designer. 1 product lead. 1 growth lead. 1 ops person
that's it.
the engineer starts the day in Cursor. they paste in a product idea, and Cursor instantly g
Billion-Dollar Startups With Bare-Bones Teams:
Silicon Valley is seeing a boom in minimalist unicorns.
⢠Safe Superintelligence: $5B, 10 people
⢠Adept: $1B, 25 people
⢠Midjourney: $10B, 49 people
Meanwhile, OpenAI operates with 2,500 employees -
Know it quick:
Tavelās Hierarchy of Engagement - The model for building $1B+ companies.
> Start with Level 1: Get users to complete the core actionāØ
> Move to Level 2: Make the product better with use- users stay because they have more to loseāØ
> R