Helping my friend grow his start-up over the last few weeks has solidified something for me about selling physical products. You can now build a massive company, in terms of revenue and units sold, with a very small team. I believe you can easily reach $10 million in revenue with a team of three or four people. You can probably get to $50 million with a team of eight to ten people. And you can get to $50 to $100 million in two or three years. This was unheard of when I started CCAW.

So, what changed? AI is one of the obvious answers. Each person can be much more productive than before. And some tasks can be easily handled 100% by AI. But an equally big change is what I call infrastructure as a service. Think Amazon Warehouse Distribution (AWD), Amazon Multichannel Fulfillment, and TikTok Multichannel Fulfillment. The infrastructure needed to scale massively doesn’t need to be built from the ground up or managed. You can just rent the capacity you need when you need it. Combine that with outsourced manufacturing and demand-generation platforms like TikTok, and you can now scale massively in a short amount of time.

You used to need a team of builders, executers, and managers. Today you just need a few high-level strategic thinkers who don’t mind getting into the weeds and who can manage service providers closely.

This is a massive change in the landscape of selling physical products.