Less Emphasis on Growth. Look for sustaining growth rather than rapid, uncontrollable, growth.

Building a company with the goal of uncontrollable growth is akin to dating Pamela Anderson: it’s wild at the start; consumes your time with empty romps at its peak; and when it ends (her inevitable return to Tommy), you’ll be left scratching your head and an empty feeling in your stomach, wondering what the hell happened as you head to the pharmacy to fill a prescription.

Aiming for rapid growth introduces many risks to the company and its long term sustainability; ideas don’t fully develop, decisions are rushed. Intentionally building a company to avoid rapid growth sounds counter intuitive, and many entrepreneur’s have a difficult time coming to terms with it. Yet it makes sense.The risks introduced by a rapid growth strategy can be (and lots of times are) the cause of the company’s failure.

Aiming for sustainable growth, on the other hand, should be the goal of every entrepreneur. A sustainable growth strategy means building a plan that will allow the company to handle the difficulties associated with a growing firm (hiring perfect people, managing processes, supply chain requirements, …) and will position the company to be profitable for years to come. A strategy for sustainable growth should have a plan in place for short-term rapid growth - (un(?))fortunately these situations sometimes can not be avoided in a hot new company. A smart entrepreneur would have a plan in place to weather these short storms and return to a sustainable path, possibly on a new growth curve.

Build for sustainable and enjoy the long term positive effects.

[Note: this is a continuing post, in follow up to my “Less AND More” post. You can find the first three continuing posts here: More Wild Guesses, Less Opportunity, More Time Building the Team.]


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Less Emphasis on Growth (The Entrepreneurs Toolbox)

Posted on 02.09.06 to Startup Strategy, General. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Add your thoughts or trackback from your own site.

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Hi, I'm Fraser and this is my personal site where I write about the things I'm interested in: start-up strategy, the web, music, and life.

My days are spent commercializing emerging technologies. Currently I'm helping to deliver the promise of semantic web to the consumer market at AdaptiveBlue. Previously I was at Trivaris, a Canadian seed stage investment firm.

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