Premature Scaling Kills Startups

bostinnovation.com

43 points·sliggity··8 comments

One of my favorite Drucker quotes:

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. - P. Drucker

This article is NOT talking about technology. It's talking about growth in team size and expenditure.

The original report/research does mention technology though (I've just been referencing it for a section of a book I'm writing) - it talks about "premature scaling" in about five different areas, which includes developing non-essential features and devoting time to technical scalability before the app has evolved to fit the market.

Is it premature scaling or is it forgetting you are building a product for people, not just giving yourself an excuse to code and play with cool technology.

...except that's not what the author is talking about. He's talking about scaling the company (including the product for people) too early.

> 70% of startups scaled prematurely along some dimension. While this number seemed high, this may go a long way towards explaining the 90% failure rate of startups

My point was for the younger startups that are surely part of his failure group. They scale their systems instead of their product because it's easier. You're right though, he talks more about larger, more mature startups.

conclusion: never scale before you have a gun pointed at your head

It also kills companies who assume that their "next greatest product" is going to be massively successful and start employing every new piece of technology, completely forgetting their core competency.

Bitter, I am.

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