But don’t let the 1k number fool you. Getting even 1 true fan is incredibly difficult.
That’s what is great about 1k. The degree to which you need to scale is reasonable if you find a large enough niche - and they number of niches where scaling your 1k true fans is large.
Doesn’t make it easy, but doubling the number of people who love what you create is tractable.
Things don't always scale like that. It's called the logistic curve. At some it becomes harder to keep growing at the same rate as before.