---
schema: 1
type: term
title: '**one-pizza company**'
description: >-
  **one-pizza company** — in this channel's captured material, Nabeel Hyatt's
  term for the right AI-era company size: a team of **about eight people**,
  small enough that a single pizza feeds everyone and “everything feels
  cohesive,” viable because software now absorbs the “craft” work and
  generalists with AI as their “special power tools” can run multiple products
  at a high level.
canonical: >-
  https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/one-pizza-company-e2e96d1e15ea
markdown: >-
  https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/one-pizza-company-e2e96d1e15ea.md
llms: null
parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt'
channel: everyinc
updated: '2026-10-23T22:12:35.346Z'
language: null
children: []
---


# \*\*one-pizza company\*\*

Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/one-pizza-company-e2e96d1e15ea

Parent: [Channel index](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt)

## Definition

**one-pizza company** — in this channel's captured material, Nabeel Hyatt's term for the right AI-era company size: a team of **about eight people**, small enough that a single pizza feeds everyone and “everything feels cohesive,” viable because software now absorbs the “craft” work and generalists with AI as their “special power tools” can run multiple products at a high level.

In this conversation with **Nabeel Hyatt**, a **one-pizza company** is his answer to the question of what AI does to company size: because building software has become as cheap as writing, the right team is **about eight people** — small enough that a single pizza feeds everyone, and everything about the company feels **cohesive** [^aadbfc77]. Nabeel connects the size to a decision-making distinction he borrows from designer **Paula Scher's** art-vs-craft framing: on a 1970s album cover, twenty people worked but only one or two made the real decisions — the rest was **craft**, and craft is what software absorbs. Now that happens at company scale, so the question becomes: how many of your 16, 20, or 200 people are making **core decisions** versus merely “whittling the wood”? The payoff for staying small is that **generalists with AI as their “special power tools”** can run multiple products at a high level — something that was impossible before. Nabeel's own behavior illustrates the trend: a card game with his kids, a board game library in Berkeley, and internal tools for running it — including a voice call that books a game agentically into Airtable — all built by a tiny team when off-the-shelf vertical SaaS proved imperfect.  - A **one-pizza company** is Nabeel Hyatt's ~8-person ideal team size in the AI era — small enough that everything feels cohesive. - The justification draws on Paula Scher's art-vs-craft distinction: software now absorbs the “craft” work, so the key question is how many people make core decisions versus “whittling the wood.” - Generalists wielding AI as “special power tools” can run multiple products at a high level, making small, cohesive teams newly viable.