Founding influencer is now on par with founding engineer.

An influencer with an organic community can identify a problem, pair with a technologist, crowdfund a solution, and continuously communicate progress along the way.

The community derisks the process of market discovery.

People will often debate whether team, product, or market wins.

In the influencer-first approach, the community helps define all three. It creates the market, articulates the problem, and pre-identifies at least one credible team member in the persona of the influencer.

A somewhat counterintuitive point: you don't need that large a following to bootstrap a new product. Even a few thousand folks is enough to start testing out ideas.

The upper limit of your company size is determined by how large that community may be in 10 years, not today.