A New Kind of Startup Is Coming

1

There’s a famous theory in engineering called Conway’s Law, which explains a lot about why different eras of technology produce different kinds of organizations. The original formulation is:

“Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.”

For example, if your organization consists of three tight-knit teams that are spread across three geographical locations, your software will probably consist of three main modules with lots of internal complexity and simple, well-defined interfaces between them.

Here’s a graphic from an excellent explainer of Conway’s Law that illustrates the idea:

Normally when engineers talk about Conway’s Law, they’re thinking about how managers should organize their employees to yield better systems design. But the law goes the other way, too: The systems we work with determine the organizations we get.

2

In the dot-com-bubble era, the typical internet startup looked something like this:

• Executive team full of MBAs
• Raise $10M+ Series A right out of the gate
• Hire dozens of engineers
• Ship first product a year or two later