Before Growth

Providing real human value isn't a benchmark for business success. Instead, success is defined by speed, scale, and growth. This is deeply rooted in our culture of technology. It's easy to become swept along without realizing how far we have strayed from our original direction.

1. Most founders are bad at growth, so if you're amazing at it, the advantage is significant. Consider: Most startups die not because founders are bad or products suck, but because they couldn't figure out how to get anyone to try them.

For a company to be valuable it must grow and endure, but many entrepreneurs focus only on short-term growth. They have an excuse: growth is easy to measure, but durability isn’t. Those who succumb to measurement mania obsess about weekly active user statistics, monthly revenue targets, and quarterly earnings reports. However, you can hit those num

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Growing without product-market fit robs you of agility. Agility allows you to iterate. If you can’t iterate fast enough, you won’t get to product-market fit.Here is my suggestion to founders of tech-enabled services: don’t grow until you achieve product-market fit. Get a few customers in the door to start, then move any further demand to a waitlist... See more