Are You Made For Explosive Startup Growth?
This blog post is happily borrowed from our Medium series.
Or in other words, “Is explosive startup growth made for you”?
The Internet has afforded us a glimpse into Explosive Growth in real-time. Something which previous generations have never had.
We can see the rise and fall of businesses in real time. We can get to experience the explosive growth of a startup in real time. Vine was just a simple video-sharing app that grew fast and died fast after Instagram released a similar but better offer. Likewise, Instagram grew exponentially when people discovered it.
We have seen hitherto unknown founders become instant billionaires right before our eyes. Their share capital ballooning from little to billions in a matter of months.
All that, from the outside, looks glittery and enviable. Who wouldn’t want to become rich NOW (not 10 years down the road. NOW!)?
Unfortunately, very few know the pains and dangers that exponential explosive growth brings with it. You have to experience it to know it. One day you are experiencing a trickle of customer/user traffic the next you are dealing with hundreds of client requests hitting your servers. Everybody wants a piece of what you are offering. Your business is now the talk of the town.
Then the dark side of it all begins to hit. Crashing servers. Corrupt disks. The entire hyper-demand shenanigans. Then comes the deluge of reporters and media attention which you hadn’t prepared for. Data migration pains. In the ensuing surge you under-deliver or fail to deliver to some users/clients requests (Twitter fail whale anyone?). Your capital begins to dwindle in the face of increasing demand. And so on.
Explosive Growth is not bad at all but it can kill you and your startup. Many startups have collapsed due to it. Formspring, the anonymous Q&A website had to shut down after abuse cropped up on its platform.
Therefore, while it’s not bad to yearn for the Explosive Growth of your startup idea you should look into yourself and ask if you can handle everything that comes with it. And, no, telling yourself you are an extrovert thus you can handle it is not the solution. If you are planning for it or are getting hints you could get into one then it’s good you have extra hands on the team who can help to stand in to handle the demand once it kicks in.
Remember, explosive growth can kill your startup. Are you ready or made for it?
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