When discussing lean teams in business, people mostly recall startups like WhatsApp, which was acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014. At the time, WhatsApp had just 55 employees. Unbelievable, indeed. But the thing is, WhatsApp was a loss-making startup in 2014. Despite having around 450 million monthly active users, they weren’t making a lot of money because of their no-advertisement policy.

Now, what if I say there is a company that was founded in 2010 and generated billions in revenue and millions in profit with just 180 employees?

Yes, I’m talking about Supercell, a Finland-based gaming company behind super-popular mobile games like Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, and Brawl Stars. In 2015, Supercell generated a revenue of $2.33 billion with a profit of around $900 million.

In 2016, Tencent, the Chinese company behind WeChat, the popular messenger app in China, acquired a majority stake in Supercell. Despite the acquisition, Supercell still continues to maintain a lean team. In 2025, Supercell generated a revenue of around $3 billion with 890 employees. This is still a significant achievement. Compare these numbers with those of EA (Electronic Arts), one of the world’s largest gaming companies. In 2025, EA generated a revenue of around $7 billion with around 13,000 employees.

But the big question here is: how Supercell can generate so much revenue with a small team? Well, the answer lies in the name itself.

Supercell, which began in 2010, had a unique way of working on gaming projects. They had various small and independent groups within the company called “cells”. Each cell had fewer than 10 employees and focused on one game project at a time.

These cells operated like mini-startups within the company. Each cell decided its own strategy, experiments, ideas, and even could stop working on projects that they weren’t confident about.

Yes, a classic case of how decentralization should work in organizations.

Since there were many cells, Supercell at any point in time was working on multiple projects at once. Some failed, and some became blockbusters.

This is an interesting way of running a company. Launch various products, with each product in charge of a small team, and see what works. And then double down on what’s working. Now, compare this approach to how most companies launch products. Yes, it’s mostly bureaucracy. Decisions take days, if not months. And then the entire company works on a product for, say, 2 to 3 years, only to see the product fail after launch.

Long market validation reports and surveys have their place. But I think the more efficient and cost-friendly way is to try a lot of things and see what works.

Let the market validate your product.