Could 20 tier 1 developers build a billion dollar company in 5 years?

Question

As a thought experiment, imagine your a founder and due to a weird tax code thing you can effectively deduct all employed salaries.You may offer up to 400K TC per employee.You must have a valuation of at least 1 billion after 5 years.Alternative challenge.You are a senior software engineer. You can only offer 75k to junior engineers, and you have up to 20 of them.You only need to reach a valuation of 10 million after 5 years.

re-thc · Accepted Answer

Impossible. You can't even feed yourself and will die before then.
> effectively deduct all employed salaries
This is only useful if you have income to deduct. It's less useful than a fund raise to begin with.
> You can only offer 75k to junior engineers
As above. I have $0 then I can't offer anything to anyone.
> You only need to reach a valuation of 10 million after 5 years
In the past there have been cases of higher valuation from just demos or outsourced MVPs. As long as you have the connections than the engineers. This is valuation not earnings from an actual product.

marssaxman · Answer

Is it possible? Well, probably - WhatsApp famously had only 32 engineers when they sold the company for $16 billion. But is it likely? Oh, goodness, no.The second challenge sounds much easier, though I'd trade at least half of those engineers for marketing/biz-dev support.

jarsin · Answer

I would think going junior route to 10 million would be way easier. 1B is becoming a unicorn. A very rare occurrence that has to come into existence at just the right time in the right market.

GianFabien · Answer

I might be oversimplifying; but it is the product, the founder's salesmanship and connections that might result in a $1b company.No matter how many brilliant programmers you employ, if the investors don't see merit in the product, vision and market the valuation won't grow.

Could 20 tier 1 developers build a billion dollar company in 5 years?

Is it possible? Well, probably - WhatsApp famously had only 32 engineers when they sold the company for $16 billion. But is it likely? Oh, goodness, no.
The second challenge sounds much easier, though I'd trade at least half of those engineers for marketing/biz-dev support.

I would think going junior route to 10 million would be way easier. 1B is becoming a unicorn. A very rare occurrence that has to come into existence at just the right time in the right market.

I might be oversimplifying; but it is the product, the founder's salesmanship and connections that might result in a $1b company.
No matter how many brilliant programmers you employ, if the investors don't see merit in the product, vision and market the valuation won't grow.