In a consulting business, the typical way you make money is by selling time. A friend of mine has called this "Slavery to the Tyranny of the Billable Hour". The way to scale is by acquiring more time (aka more employees available to work for more hours) so you can bill more hours. It's ok for some, but diversification is better.

We've discovered that whenever you get a bunch of smart folk together who are passionate about what they do, other avenues open up. In our case, we've start forming teams around different business models and product ideas that attract us. These models and ideas are then selectively sponsored by the consultancy to go forward, develop something and release it to the world. The hope is that these new products and businesses would become a source of income for the whole team. As those products and new businesses scale, the consulting business profits, thus scaling through alternate means.

Full disclosure: I work with EJ at Mutually Human.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. There are certainly larger companies than Mutually Human. If one wanted to work for a large company, I'm sure many will post in this thread… :)

However...

- I'm learning new things all the time, at a faster pace than anywhere else I've worked. The company is very focused on everyone's growth.

- I actually have time for my family, personal projects, friends, etc, as we really do keep our hours reasonable.

- We have happy clients who love our work and are willing to pay well for it.

why is this relevant? [edit: fwiw, the question so obviously has the answer "no" (for hn-related values of "scale") that it doesn't seem to be an honest enquiry at all, but an attempt to make a point (for some hn-related value of "point").]