Imagine if a CEO could turn an idea into a large company without hiring anyone else. That lonely but economically tantalizing idea remains utterly out of reach, yet some startups have gotten close. For example, Instagram had 13 employees when Facebook acquired it for $1 billion in April 2012, a few weeks before its initial public offering. Instagram built an app that attracted 30 million users and a private market valuation of $500 million. Instagram’s ability to create $77 million worth of value for each employee at the time of its acquisition—4.7 times more than Facebook’s $16.6 ...
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