A talk on why we kept the studio at two people on purpose — and what that constraint does to the work.
This started as a talk for a small conference and turned into the closest thing we have to a company philosophy. The short version: two is not a stage on the way to twenty. It's a destination, and a deliberate one.
01 — The constraintWhat two people can't do
Two people can't run three projects, can't carry a layer of management, and can't hide a weak decision behind process. Every one of those limitations is also the point. The constraint forces focus that a larger team has to manufacture artificially.
Scale solves problems by adding people. We'd rather solve them by removing the problem.
02 — The long roomWhy small lasts
A two-person studio can stay in the long room — the years after launch — because there's no growth machine demanding the next thing. We get to maintain, refine, and actually live with what we ship. That's rarer than it should be.
The full talk and slides are available on request.