Growth and patience

I’ve been in a weird funk the last couple of days. I think it’s probably that I’m just a bit tired from the long birthday weekend. I didn’t even stay out late on any night or anything, but I was active pretty much everyday. When you’re 30+, a full day doing activities can feel like you were out at a club until 4 am. Hoping I can catch up on some sleep tonight and get back to my groove tomorrow.

On another note, I was on an interview call with a candidate this afternoon. He had previously worked at a PE firm with a VC arm and he guessed that we were in the bucket of startups making close to $50m in revenue. I was flattered, but told him that we had a long way to go until we get there.

Growth is one of if not the most important metric in the VC backed startup world. Every startup generating revenue is looking to grow as fast as possible. Of course that’s easier said than done.

I often get stuck in own thoughts when it comes to growth. Why aren’t we growing faster? What else should we be doing to grow? I know a lot of my friends at startups often face the same questions even if they’re growing at a healthy clip.

I’ve seen a lot of numbers for these fast growing startups and the reality is that most companies take awhile to hit consistent growth numbers on the revenue front. It takes awhile to carve out a new industry or launch a brand new product.

I’m guilty as anyone of being impatient when it comes to growing my startup and I need to often remind myself that this is a marathon, not a sprint.

I heard an impressive VC once say that “we should be long-term greedy” and I’ll be reminding myself when thoughts about growth come to mind.