The danger scenario of a grow-slowly business is that you usually rely on clients, and sometimes they can become so demanding that you never escape the mediocrity of ad-hoc client demands. You want to avoid providing "custom" services that usually end up with you doing their grunt work without being able to automate it. You also need to constantly be looking out for better clients. Good clients aren't always the ones who pay the best. They're the ones who will let you do things right and who give you the freedom to actually grow, rather than living in a maintenance slog.
There's always a boss. The appeal of a VC startup is that your boss wants your company to grow at 100+ percent per year. He wants you to play the anti-martingale strategy.
I think the problem, both for a person and a company, is that it's hard to find a "boss" who is looking for serious but not ridiculous growth. A corporate boss won't let you rise faster than him, and large companies get sluggish and stupid. So the typical job results in a boss who won't let you grow (personally) more than 3 or 4 percent per year. A VC wants you to triple your valuation every year. It's best to work for people who are on board with "get rich slowly": a 15 to 20 percent increase in the value of your knowledge base and skill set (and 15-40% growth in the business imprint) year after year.
The danger scenario of a grow-slowly business is that you usually rely on clients, and sometimes they can become so demanding that you never escape the mediocrity of ad-hoc client demands. You want to avoid providing "custom" services that usually end up with you doing their grunt work without being able to automate it. You also need to constantly be looking out for better clients. Good clients aren't always the ones who pay the best. They're the ones who will let you do things right and who give you the freedom to actually grow, rather than living in a maintenance slog.
There's always a boss. The appeal of a VC startup is that your boss wants your company to grow at 100+ percent per year. He wants you to play the anti-martingale strategy.
I think the problem, both for a person and a company, is that it's hard to find a "boss" who is looking for serious but not ridiculous growth. A corporate boss won't let you rise faster than him, and large companies get sluggish and stupid. So the typical job results in a boss who won't let you grow (personally) more than 3 or 4 percent per year. A VC wants you to triple your valuation every year. It's best to work for people who are on board with "get rich slowly": a 15 to 20 percent increase in the value of your knowledge base and skill set (and 15-40% growth in the business imprint) year after year.