Datalynlabs has been one person since day one. I have turned down the kind of work that would have pushed me to hire, and I have watched friends' studios scale and then shrink and then scale and then shrink.

The math

At one, every decision lives in the same head. At four, somebody is waiting for a handoff. At sixteen, there is an ops person whose job is handoffs. I have decided I do not want to run a handoff company, so the studio stays at one.

The client pays for one brain, all of it — not an hour of attention from sixteen.

This also means turning down good work. About six full projects a year, hard cap. That is the cost of the choice, and I think it is the right one.