How Many People Work at Modal?

Erik Bernhardsson says Modal recently crossed 200 people and will probably hit 250 by the end of the year. At 10, 20, or 30 people, culture stays implicit because everyone can sit in a room and tell when he is annoyed or happy. At 250 people, coworkers do not necessarily see whether he is annoyed or happy, and a lot of new people can feel nervous talking to the CEO, so context, motivation, daily excitement, incentives, implicit trust, and accountability have to be set on purpose. The Dunbar number is more fake than real as a story, and still kind of real: around 150 to 200 people, laying the foundation of the culture is very important, including how to remain approachable.

Modal grew about 4x on an annualized basis in the last 12 months. Doubling the team every year is not super hard. A 4x pace is an unsustainable growth rate on a relative basis. What shows up is cultural drift, islands of different working styles, and people doing very speculative things. On the engineering team, asking an engineer what they are working on can reveal a fringe project and whether the time should really go there. Fast growth also costs the time spent ramping people up. The exact path after the year is still open: maybe 250 by the end of the year, then growth of maybe two and a half or three times, very likely near 700 people next year. Most of the new roles are engineers, and sales is opening up a lot too.