---
title: "Starting an App Business: How Many People Does Your Team Need?"
locale: "en"
language: "en-HK"
published: "2018-11-28T16:28:40+08:00"
updated: "2026-03-17T23:03:27.823Z"
canonical: "https://accordhk.com/blog/starting-an-app-business-how-many-people-does-your-team-need-145"
---
# Starting an App Business: How Many People Does Your Team Need?
An app startup needs funding and the right mix of skills. This article explains three core team roles, ways to overcome staffing shortages, and why one founder can be enough to get started.
## In brief
One person can be enough to start an app business. Hipster, Hacker and Hustler provide a useful three-person team model, but the right mix depends on the product. Development tools, outsourcing and startup events can help address staffing gaps.
Success stories such as WhatsApp and Uber have fuelled a boom in app startups, inspiring many people with creative ideas to launch businesses through apps. [Starting an app business]() requires more than funding: the composition of the founding team is another key factor. Today, we explore the minimum number of people needed to form a technology startup team and build an app business.
[An app startup team's]() composition lays the foundation for success or failure
A saying in Silicon Valley's startup community: you only need 3 types of people—Hipster, Hacker and Hustler
A fully established app development company, for example, typically includes:
Management:
CEO (responsible for the company's major decisions and direction)
CTO (determines product architecture, technical direction and resources)
Operational staff:
Business consultant or growth hacker (business development)
Designer (UX / UI design)
Software engineer (programming)
Quality assurance engineer (QA)
Project manager (manages project progress)
Administrative staff (handles accounting, human resources and administration)
If you have sufficient funding, you can use this structure as a guide when recruiting team members. In practice, however, startup teams often lack the resources to support such a large and complex structure. So what is the most basic composition of a [startup team]()?
An efficient team needs only three people: a Hipster (creative designer), a Hacker (a technical expert skilled in a range of technologies) and a Hustler (the person who markets the product and the company's vision).
Before a larger team is assembled, the central figure—the founder—usually wears several hats, handling the roles of CEO, business development, marketing and fundraising. This is the Hustler role mentioned above. If the founder has no technical background, they need to find a CTO to take charge of the technical side of product development—the Hacker—and then decide, according to the available budget, whether to hire [front-end / back-end engineers]() to help with development. Alternatively, founders who already have some technical grounding can also act as CTO, directly hiring and guiding front-end / back-end engineers to develop the product.
What if you cannot find suitable people to join your app startup team?
Before you find an excellent CTO or software engineers to handle the technical side, however, you may encounter the following problems:
1. In the early stages, many startup teams cannot afford high salaries and choose to offer equity to attract talent. However, allocating equity too widely can create more complex problems as the business grows. Joining the team also means sharing the risk of startup failure, and uncertainty over the value of that equity makes many talented people cautious about accepting a low salary plus an equity allocation.
2. Finding a suitable CTO can be harder than filling other positions. A CTO is particularly important to an app startup team: besides coordinating technical solutions across products and setting the technical direction, they must anticipate the market's future technology needs. Finding someone capable of fulfilling this role is not easy.
3. A limited budget makes it impossible to hire excellent engineers or enough of them, delaying the development schedule for the [app product]().
Yet every moment counts when starting a business. Bringing your idea to life a day earlier means entering the market a day earlier and gaining an advantage before your competitors. How can you overcome the constraints of insufficient staffing?
1. Choose suitable app development tools as an alternative
Suppose you plan to act as CTO yourself or have already found one, but lack the budget to hire both front-end and back-end engineers. Or perhaps you cannot find an excellent full-stack engineer, since mastering both front-end and back-end development is quite challenging for software engineers. In these cases, you can consider tools that accelerate development, such as PaaS (platform-as-a-service) and BaaS (backend-as-a-service).
Well-known front-end tools include Amazon's AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Windows' Azure, which provide servers that are already set up as a foundation for development. Back-end options include Facebook's Parse (whose service has already been discontinued by FB), Google's Firebase and Skygear from Hong Kong developer Oursky. Besides servers, these offer prebuilt back-end systems, allowing engineers to focus on product development and reducing back-end maintenance costs.
The benefit of using PaaS or BaaS tools is that, before the team is fully staffed, existing platforms and back-end features can substantially shorten development time. Besides bringing the product to market sooner, the CTO can use the time saved to plan the product's future technical development and direction.
2. Choose[ an app outsourcing company]() to take on the development project
Of course, not everyone can design and write code themselves. As mentioned earlier, finding the ideal CTO to join the team is also difficult. If you lack the relevant expertise, you can consider outsourcing the entire development process. Choosing a suitable outsourcing company is a separate subject in itself.
Whether you use BaaS tools to speed up development or outsource development directly to a professional production company, the aim is to complete the product as quickly as possible, launch it and improve it by observing user feedback. If the product passes the market test and achieves some initial success, it can naturally attract investor interest. Once funding is secured, more money becomes available for product development and recruiting talented people. Having an established reputation and a standout product also makes it easier to attract excellent engineers to your team.
3. Actively participate in different startup industry events
After addressing product development and funding, you should also actively participate in startup-related events. Industry meetups, startup weekends, hackathons and venture investment competitions are frequently held in different places. Attending more of these events helps you expand your network, meet others who share your enthusiasm for startups and increase your chances of finding ideal team partners.
[An app startup team]() needs how many people at minimum? Just 1 can be enough
The basic startup team structure and recommended combination explained above are not absolute rules, because every product has unique requirements.
For example, if your goal is to create an Instagram, an expert in content marketing and community management would be more useful than technical staff during the early stages. If you want to build an Uber, a technical team familiar with big data analysis and computation would be more important than business development and marketing. Headcount is not the key: what matters is what your team members can do and what they do well. In fact, the market has never lacked successful startups with small teams. Here are some of the best-known examples:
1. Before Facebook acquired Instagram for US$1 billion (approximately NT$30 billion), its team had only 13 people.
2. WhatsApp, also acquired by Facebook, had only 35 engineers when it had 450 million users. Later, when it had 900 million active users, it still had only 50 engineers.
3. Business communication and collaboration platform Slack reached a valuation of US$5.1 billion (approximately NT$153 billion) in just 5 years. The original product idea came from the communication experiences of its founder and 3 colleagues while making a game.
Original article URL: https://goo.gl/p18GME
## Frequently asked questions
### What is the minimum number of people needed to start an app business?
One person can be enough to get started. The article recommends a three-person model covering design, technology and marketing, while emphasising that the right team depends on the product's requirements.
### What do Hipster, Hacker and Hustler mean in a startup team?
The Hipster handles creative design, the Hacker provides technical expertise, and the Hustler markets the product and the company's vision. A founder may take on several responsibilities before the team grows.
### Does an app startup founder need to hire a CTO?
A founder without a technical background needs a CTO to lead the technical side of product development. A founder with sufficient technical grounding can act as CTO and hire and guide engineers directly; outsourcing development is another option when the relevant expertise is unavailable.
### How can a small team deal with limited development resources?
The article suggests using PaaS or BaaS tools to shorten development time, or outsourcing development to a professional company. The aim is to launch the product sooner and improve it through user feedback.
### Where can founders meet potential team members?
Startup meetups, startup weekends, hackathons and venture investment competitions offer opportunities to expand a founder's network. These events can help founders meet people who share their interest in startups and find suitable team partners.