Why Did Legora Stop Trying to Stay at 20 Engineers?

Jacob Lauritzen says staying at 20 engineers would lose the deals. Legora is in fierce competition, and clients ask for more than a tiny team can ship.

He used to argue the other way. About half a year in, he put up a slide from the movie 300 and said Legora would be 20 engineers for the rest of its history and would beat much bigger companies. The company has 100 engineers now, and he says that already feels too small. Refusing the extra work would send buyers elsewhere. His job, as he describes it, is to make a few primitives feel like a wide product, so the customer sees a lot while the team did not build a separate system for every request. Legora has also skipped speculative bets. There is already a mountain of demand for the things clients are asking for, so the team builds those, and only sometimes ships a piece the clients did not request because it looks strategic.