Twice I lead revenue organizations that were top 75 Inc’s fastest growing companies. Another time I was the co-founder of a company that grew from $0-2M a month in 24 months.
I’ve also lead / built rev organizations that grew steadily and profitably over years.
High velocity growth is very hard to manage, especially if you haven’t done it before and even doubly hard if you’re trying to do it profitably.
Rule of thumb is every time the business doubles it changes, like literally everything breaks and then changes.
I could (and maybe will) write specifically about the challenges of growing too fast, but in short it can actually be as detrimental as no growth at all if not managed well.
A few things to note are you can oversell your product team, your implementation team, your sourcing team all while killing your companies reputation, damaging the brand and pissing off your customers. This happens more than people realize.
What I like now is steady, manageable, profitable growth. Easier said than done, but actually not that hard – if you know what to look for and what to focus on.
So, as the year comes to an end and you’re planning for 2024, think carefully about how much you want to grow and what the right growth plan looks like.
Always happy to chat with anyone trying to figure this out as it’s something I thoroughly enjoy doing.