That's a challenging comparison, though, as Instagram never had to do fundamental research. They wrote an app. One that has to scale to enormous traffic, to be sure, but that came after they were a 10-15 person company. Meanwhile, Kodak was inventing lens technology and film chemistry and manufacturing processes and distribution channels.

Similarly, Ford has more employees than Gran Turismo, but they're not in the same industry.

> My overall point is that profits that at one time would require a town, or be a major part of a city's economy, can be made with a small office's worth of staff.

This has been true for most industries even 'with-in themselves': it's called productivity growth.

The number of employees (or man-hours) needed to create (say) a tonne of steel has dropped a lot, so where previously you had 'steel towns', now a plant may just have a very few (and produce more tonnage than they've ever done).

Disagree. It's not a small office worth of staff. You're not counting all the jobs involved in providing the data centers.

You are describing CraigsList. No ads, no salesmen, just a small staff.