A Sinking Ship With Ten Captains: What I Learned About the Right Team Size for Starting a Business in China

Today, I found myself remembering something from a long time ago.

About ten years ago, an acquaintance from China who was living in Japan asked me if I wanted to start a business together targeting the Chinese market.

At the time, the Chinese market had real momentum, and there was strong interest in Japanese products and services. Just hearing the idea, it sounded like there was a lot of potential.

If someone who understood the Japanese side teamed up with someone who had networks on the Chinese side, it could be interesting.

Looking back now, I still think there really was potential at that point.

But there was one fatal problem.

Too many people got involved.

It Started With Just a Few People

At first, there were only a few of us.

But then people kept being added.

“This person has strong local connections.”

“This person understands logistics.”

“This person has sales channels.”

Before we knew it, the number of people involved kept increasing.

In the end, there were close to ten people.

What made it difficult was that they were not just workers. Everyone carried the atmosphere of being an “initial member.”

In other words, everyone was on the management side.

That was the beginning of the trouble.

Nothing Could Be Decided

Whenever we tried to decide something, nothing got decided.

How should we price the product? Who would take responsibility? How should profits be divided? Would the Japanese side lead, or the Chinese side?

Every time, the discussion went on forever.

Everyone said something reasonable.

But when ten correct opinions gather in one place, the organization stops moving.

The number of meetings increased, but the business did not move forward.

Looking back, by that point, it was no longer a business. The meetings themselves had become the purpose.

The Moment I Knew It Would Not Work

One day, during a meeting, I suddenly felt myself cool down.

“Ah, this is impossible.”

That was the feeling.

No one was ready to take final responsibility.

Or more precisely, responsibility had been spread too thinly across ten people.

An organization without someone who is truly prepared to take responsibility makes decisions extremely slowly.

In the end, I stepped away midway through.

I felt that if I continued, only time would disappear.

Fortunately, it was still before we had started investing in equipment, so the money I had put in was returned.

What Happened Afterward

Later, I heard about what happened through the grapevine.

As expected, the team fell apart.

One person left, then another.

Before long, almost no one was left.

And now, apparently, the business is being run in a small way by the one person who stayed until the end.

I find that ironic.

A project that began with ten people trying to do something big eventually converged into the shape of a one-person shop.

What I Learned

Since that experience, my thinking has changed quite a bit.

In the early stage of a startup, fewer people is better.

One person.

Two at most.

That is probably the lightest and most mobile structure.

People tend to think that adding more people means adding more wisdom, but in reality, coordination costs can explode.

Especially in the early stage, no one knows the right answer anyway.

If that is the case, being able to move matters more.

A small boat moving forward with one person can go much farther than a ship with ten captains standing still.