Why slow and steady growth makes sense for startups

Have you noticed how much talk there is amongst startups about how fast growth is a measure of success. It certainly makes for good media headlines. But a high speed business growth trajectory is not for everyone, in fact it is for the relatively few in reality. Researchers at UC Berkeley and Stanford have found that premature scaling is the most common cause of failure for startups. What makes more sense is to aim for slow and steady growth, which is ultimately more sustainable. There are some great examples of businesses that started small, lean and agile, but which are today huge success stories, such as the online ticketing platform Eventbrite. It was founded in 2006 and for the first three years was a very lean business before going after its first venture funding round. By 2009, the company had been turned down by almost every VC firm in Silicon Valley. The founders continued to bootstrap and work hard to build the company from the ground up as the only three employees. By 2014, the company was valued at over $1 billion. Now that’s a great example of that old saying, “slow and steady wins the race.”