| A growing cohort of “AI-native” startups — companies built from the beginning with artificial intelligence at the center of both product and operations — are discovering they can do far more with far fewer people than their predecessors. Lex, an AI-powered writing assistant for professionals, has just three employees — and its founder wants to keep it that way, even as the company scales. “I love the idea of staying smaller over time so that the core group feels really aligned and motivated and able to communicate about hard things,” said founder Nathan Baschez. “You want the right small group of people, rather than more people.” Across interviews with more than half a dozen AI-native founders, two themes repeatedly surfaced: Their teams are remarkably small, and their org charts are unusually fluid. At Daydream, a fashion-shopping startup still in beta, the team is in the low dozens. “If you wanted to do this company three or four years ago, you would need so many more people,” said co-founder Dan Cary, who spent more than a decade at Google. With AI assistants, even non-technical team members can build prototypes themselves, blurring the lines between roles that have traditionally been distinct. Daydream routinely tests 15 to 20 product ideas in parallel — an experimentation pace Cary says would be impossible without automation. At Sailplane, a stealth-mode startup building AI agents, automation starts at the top. CEO Sam Ramji’s calendar is managed entirely by an AI assistant that mimics a human scheduler’s tone and responsiveness. The company has six employees and plans to stay under 10 through year’s end. Even companies that have downsized, like AI email management startup Shortwave, say they're better for it. Founder Andrew Lee said the team was cut from 15 to six, in part because not everyone could leverage AI effectively. “We need to optimize our team for a small number of highly cross-functional people where we can move super fast,” he said. “Our moat is going to become speed.” — Jo Constanz, Bloomberg News Read more: Built to Stay Small: Inside the Org Charts of AI-Native Startups
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