The Tiny Team era is here

"Quentin Peccoux vibe codes every day. He's one of seven full-time employees at an AI-powered startup. Initially, he feared the technology would replace him. Now, he says it "feels like a superpower." He's not alone in boasting about AI's impact. Shivam Sagar, one of nine full-time employees at another company, said that AI agents can do the work of two to three additional engineers."

"For better or worse, the Tiny Team era is here. Modern-day startups are proving that they can scale more quickly, reduce spending, and thrive against competition with only a handful of employees. So what is it really like working on a team with only a few people who are human beings? We asked founders and employees from startups with small staffs of fewer than 10 people about working alongside AI agents. We talked about what they like, what stresses them out, and what skills are AI-proof."

Small startups with fewer than ten employees are using AI agents to multiply output and reduce costs. Founders and employees report that AI optimizes codebases, automates tasks, and expands individual capacity, sometimes making one engineer equivalent to two or three. Workers experience increased productivity and new roles like AI content operations and head of AI products. Some employees initially feared job loss but now describe AI as empowering. However, intense workloads and work-life balance challenges persist, with early hires reporting exhaustive schedules. Teams leverage AI for diagnostics, feature development, and content generation to compete with larger organizations.

Read at Business Insider