I came across Ninite today and saw that they had 2 employees and was a YC company. It felt quite interesting. They didn't fit the framework of "break things, do stuff" strategy of blitzscaling.
I tried to use "5+ years" as a proxy for survival, but that is a very weak metric as many companies are inactive, had dead domains or the cofounder LinkedIn showing a different story. But the "5+ years" does remove fund raising companies.
Most folks in HN dream of having a solo business with them being the owner-operator. This list provides an interesting database of things that spans from "Boeing for electric planes" to essentially job-boards or newsletters.
What happens when you're profitable but not quite the 10x return or even 3x return?
I wouldn’t trust the accuracy of the company size field. I don’t think we ever updated that field as our employee count scaled up or down.