A lot of people talk about scale as it relates to the size of the company—that is, numbers of people. But I actually think there’s another dimension which really significantly affects scaling, and that’s the differentiation or complexity of the business. Reid Hoffman, for example, tends to focus on, “What happens when this company is like a village, versus a city”—you know, his whole analogy for the size of a company. I’ve seen companies that have a very basic model that they’re not changing a lot have an easier time scaling at first. The kinds of things that I’ve seen really complicate
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