Joy scales with growth rate, misery scales with headcount

My experience with startups is that joy scales with growth rate and misery scales with headcount. That joy scales with growth rate is kind of obvious and likely needs no explanation. That misery scales with headcount seems to be because the more employees you have, the more frustrating personnel management and interpersonal conflict type issues you are bound to encounter.

So for maximum happiness, grow fast (in metrics) and stay small (in humans).