In one of our more recent team discussions; there was a long argument about linear growth vs. exponential growth. At some point, one person said that there was no point of building a business in the internet space if all we were chasing was linear growth.
This is what linear growth looks like:
This is what exponential growth looks like:
Essentially the J curve/ hockey stick that VCs love so much.
And god knows we really want to be part of the latter group but in a world where the path to hell is paved with good intentions, I would honestly settle for the first. When I look around at all the companies that have single mindedly chased the J curve, sacrificing sanity metrics for vanity; only to find the ground collapsing underneath them when it mattered most — I wonder why we won’t just fall into the same trap.
So many of the entrepreneurs I look up to can count themselves amongst this group of people (falling into a vanity trap). Perhaps this is a risk that consumer facing companies are more susceptible to but a lot of this is also a derivative of how VC economics work. Investors need to try and hit every ball out of the park for the model to work (FYI — your startup is the ball). Ones and twos are nice for PR but it’s the big transactions that make money.
So while we chase the J curve and find ourselves willing to settle for linearity; here are some examples of companies catching the J curve.
Thanks for your time,
Ashish Kapoor
Team KG
Originally published at kalagato.com.
