Small Business
The Quiet Power of the Ten-Person Company
America's most resilient businesses are the ones nobody talks about. Here's what they know that growth-obsessed founders don't.
Last January, I spent two weeks visiting small businesses across the American South — a bakery in Savannah, a letterpress studio in Asheville, a two-person software shop in Chattanooga. None of them had venture capital. All of them were profitable, calm, and genuinely happy with the work they were doing.
Building for the Long Run
Sarah Chen runs a ten-person marketing agency in Portland. Last year she turned down a merger offer that would have tripled her headcount overnight. When I asked why, she shrugged and said her team had something bigger companies couldn't manufacture — trust built over years of shared work and late-night deadlines.
"That's not a constraint — that's the whole point. We chose each other. You can't scale that kind of trust." — Sarah Chen, Bright Signal Agency, Portland