The Tiny Teams Thesis

The inversion

Work that required 50 people now requires 5 — if those 5 know how to architect AI systems correctly.

This isn't speculation. Midjourney built a $200M+ ARR company with fewer than 20 people. Lovable hit $17M ARR with roughly 15. BuiltWith generates $14M/year with one person.

Tiny teams win because:

• Coordination costs collapse. No meetings about meetings. No politics. No waiting.
• Context stays intact. Everyone knows everything. Decisions happen where work happens.
• Revenue-per-person becomes the metric that matters. Not headcount growth. Not utilization rates. Value created per contributor.

What AI consulting gets wrong

The data is damning: 95% of AI projects fail. Not because AI doesn't work — it works spectacularly well. They fail because of misaligned incentives.

Traditional consultancies are optimized for:

• Billable hours, not outcomes
• Expanding scope, not delivering value
• Creating dependency, not building capability
• Impressive slide decks, not working systems

The "handoff problem" is endemic. Strategy teams design systems they'll never build. Implementation teams inherit specs without context. 87% of AI projects stall at activation — when the consultants leave and the client is supposed to take over.

This isn't a bug. It's the business model working as designed.

How Synapti operates differently

We're a collective, not an agency

Everyone who builds owns a piece. No employees, only partners. When you win, we win — literally. Our incentives are your incentives.

We ship working systems

The same team that designs your AI system builds it. No handoffs. No "activation risk." If we can't ship it, we don't spec it.

Our playbooks are open

We publish our methodologies. If you can build it yourself, you should. We don't compete on secrets — we compete on execution. Our playbooks are licensed CC BY-SA. Use them, improve them, share them.

We prefer small teams

Two Synapti engineers will outperform a ten-person consultancy team. Not because we're ten times smarter — because coordination costs are real, and we've eliminated most of them.

Four reinforcing activities

Synapti isn't just a consultancy. It's a flywheel:

Each activity feeds the others. Client work surfaces problems that become products. Products demonstrate capability that attracts clients. Media amplifies everything. Ventures create long-term value everyone shares.

What this means for you

If you're evaluating AI partnerships, ask:

• Does this team have skin in the game? Or are they optimizing for hours?
• Will the people who design the system also build it?
• Will I be more capable after working with them? Or more dependent?
• Can I see how they actually work? Or just case studies and credentials?

We're not for everyone. If you want a big-name logo on your board deck, hire McKinsey. If you want a working AI system built by people who share your upside, we should talk.