A company at scale doesn’t act as it did when it was a start-up; it just doesn’t work. In short, bigger systems don’t carry the same properties.
To quote Nassim Taleb — “I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist.”
The more kids play grassroots football, the more opportunities there are to play; that works — the network effect.
Yet at a club level, where affiliation, status and culture are important, more doesn’t add, it dilutes. Replace “this is who we are” with “we are for everyone,” and you are everyone — and you can see my point.
A tight-knit club team, an elite squad, a specific coach’s group that prides itself on how it trains — those run on affiliation, not capacity. “More people” there isn’t obviously better; it can dilute exactly the thing that made people want to belong to it in the first place.
More people playing a sport is just that, a fine thing; more medals, well, that’s for people who understand that what works in one environment won’t work in another.