An report published by mergers and acquisitions specialist Magister Advisors, highlights the fact that current market conditions will make it possible in a near future for a company to be worth $1 billion per employee (or as the authors of the report put it, near-zero, billion dollar company).

Magister Advisors cites the recent acquisition of Instagram by Facebook where a 13-staff company was valued at $1 billion or around $77 million per employee. Facebook itself, according to its IPO filing, has an employee valuation of $33 million while Microsoft is less than a tenth of that.

Four factors can explain why within a generation, a new breed of super-efficient companies have managed to increase the approximate value of companies to new heights.

These are established distribution channels, zero-cost download business models, near free + stable software stacks and reusable components as well as user connection marketing.

All four managed to get Instagram into a success in only 551 days while multi-billion dollar Twitter was developed over a weekend and was coded and launched within 120 days.