How many engineers work at Airbnb? If there were 18, that would mean they hired 2. That's not that crazy.
More broadly, I think people consistently underestimate how much you can get done with a very small team at a startup and, simultaneously, underestimate how many engineers it is possible to throw at a single product.
It is a relatively simple website that allows you to search apartment listings - essentially a very pretty CRUD app.
What are the rest doing?
So assuming at least 5 people per team thats already 25 people ... why is it so hard to understand that building anything at scale involves lots of man power?