Success Begets Success
On my commute home this evening, I soundgecko-listened to a Mark Suster post about Growth Hacking. In the post he made the statement, “Success begets success.” That resonates strongly with our experience.
There have been several times in our history when our sales started to ramp with hockey stick looking trendlines. In those moments, it was clear that the growth was not due to our incremental efforts. Rather, it was success begetting more and more success. Those moments are always awesome.
If we had sustained the growth of some of those ramps, we would be a billion dollar company by now. Unfortunately, sustaining exponential growth is really hard and most startups never hit that lucky jackpot.
Luckily, “success begets success” also applies to the broader picture in a startup. Each year we grow revenue significantly. Each year it becomes easier to grow. We are able to not only leverage who we are today, but we are able to leverage who we have been in the past to win new deals. Brand recognition matters. Track record matters.
I wish I had understood this more fully during the tough early days of building our startup. It would have been nice to know that the slog gets better, assuming there are some initial nice successes. Doing things that don’t scale helps get those.
What are your thoughts on the phrase “success begets success”?