Startups need a bus factor
Written on September 25th, 2025 by Jonathan Hilgart
I was reflecting the other day on a trip we took at One Medical for an offsite. Our planning team was very considerate in accommodating flight times, rooms, no rooms, etc. However, they were very focused on splitting up our infra team into separate flights “just in case.”
This is a typical example of corporate risk aversion in practice: “Well, if one plane goes down at least we’ll have someone who still knows how to run the system.” Morbid, yes. Good business sense? Also yes. If you have a large business, you need to optimize to ensure things keep running. No. Matter. What.
In contrast, a huge advantage startups have is speed. Startups, in fact, want a bus-factor problem for their business. When you’re 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 people, each person should be solely responsible for a single domain, and deeply knowledgeable about that domain. There is little room for redundancy. Think of it this way: would you want two Tom Bradys, one of them replacing Gronk on the field with you? No. Everyone needs to own their job.
I use the analogy of T-shaped engineers to help guide decision-making at this stage. Can you go deep in an area (the stem of the T), but are you flexible enough to branch out to other areas as needed (the top of the T)?
