When Growth is a Bad Thing

Article is best enjoyed as a zen koan:

Phish would not have grown large if they had grown large quickly.

Startup advice = limited world experience + over generalization. All arguments regarding startups have holes in them.

Agreed. The idea is not articulated.

But let's leave aside the way it's crafted, and look at the core proposal : the article seems to suggest that growing too fast reduce how well the company is perceived, or how efficient it may be.

But as you said, no evidence is provided. It could just be a survivor bias.

Also, considering how people keep talking about "the next big thing" and companies with double digits growth rate, there could even be counter evidence to this claim.

Is it necessary for posters to submit messages containing wild speculations not backed with evidence, or even with some counter evidence ?

I wish it was possible to downvote some articles to reclaim the (collectively) lost time - 10 seconds by thousands of people - or to avoid starting a reasoning on false premises.

I for one enjoy it when I'm told how and why some idea is wrong, and where deadends are. Too bad this can't be done yet on HN.

I think it can be the reverse in a lot of ways. VCs generally aren't as concerned with profitability, only traction and revenue. When you're bootstrapped, profitability is a major concern, since you don't have the comfortable cushion of a runway, and have to "fund" your company using your revenues.

VCs will ensure that you focus on revenue (or at least traction) at the expense of product, though, so the point largely stands.

VCs don't necessarily care about profitability either. They're looking for a liquidity event - either M&A or IPO. Profitability is only useful insofar as it helps achieve the desired liquidity event at maximum valuation. More to the point, large investors cause a short-term growth focus, because they're looking for 5-20x returns over the course of a few years. But as others have said, do you want to be rich, or do you want to be king? If you want to make a great product and are willing to take your time to do it, don't take investor money any more than you must, so you aren't beholden to their interests - because "make a great product" isn't their interest.

The title is fine even if a little bit click-baity. However this digression about VC money blurred the core message imho. That's why Nick inspired me to write http://hr4startups.quora.com/When-growth-is-a-really-bad-thi... where I attempt to emphasize the most important stuff.

Yes we are getting more than 10 deals. That was a couple years ago. :-)

We've been very judicious about product decisions regarding customers, that's not really the kind of bending I'm referring to. It's more about the effort involved to get them to your site, onboarded, excited and pulling out their wallet.