Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death? - The Diigo Meta page

• 13 Nov 09
  

  Fadzlan

  project_management opinion business own_business

• 05 Nov 09
  

  Joel Liu

  • Then I came across a quote from Geoffrey Moore, who is best known for his best-selling book Crossing the Chasm, which is about how businesses cross over from their initial niche markets to dominate larger markets. In another book, called Inside the Tornado, Moore writes about the great battle between Oracle and Ingres in the early 1980s. The winner of that battle is well known: Oracle now has a market cap of more than $100 billion, and I'll bet you've never heard of Ingres.

    
    

    "What set Oracle apart from Ingres," Moore writes, "was that [CEO] Larry Ellison drove for 100 percent growth while Ingres 'accepted' 50 percent growth." Executives at Ingres meant well. According to Moore, they felt that the company "simply cannot grow any faster than 50 percent and still adequately serve our customers. No one can. Look at Oracle. They are promising anything and everything and shipping little or nothing. Everybody knows it. Their customers hate them. They are going to hit the wall."

  • It's entirely possible. Think of it this way: If you're growing at 50 percent a year, and your competitor is growing at 100 percent a year, it takes only eight years before your competitor is 10 times bigger than you. And when it's 10 times bigger than you, it can buy 10 times as much advertising and do 10 times as many projects and have meetings with 10 times as many customers. And you begin to disappear.
  • 1 more annotations...
  • • I've been working on the assumption that a product naturally creates demand for itself and the sales team just helps fulfill that demand. But I've realized that I have things backward. I've come to understand that a sales team drives demand. My problem is that I've never been able to figure out how to hire good salespeople. For a guy who wrote a book on how to hire great programmers, it's mortifying how incompetent I've been at enlarging the sales team, which, right now, consists of one terrific account executive and a dog.
• 04 Nov 09
  

  Tobi B

  joel wachstum

  • for pragmatist customers, the first freedom in a rapidly shifting market is order and security. That can only come from rallying around a clear market leader. Once the apparent leader-to-be emerges, pragmatists will support that company, virtually regardless of how arrogant, unresponsive, or overpriced it is.
  • For a guy who wrote a book on how to hire great programmers, it's mortifying how incompetent I've been at enlarging the sales team, which, right now, consists of one terrific account executive and a dog. (I'm just kidding. There's no dog.)
• 

  Mihir Damniwala

  Very nice article about what we discuss. The perspective is right, the debate is something that is worth reading and thinking about.

  Joel growth company slow death strategy

• 

  Navin Parray

  entrepreneurship growth

• 

  david miller

  Business growth qwerty

• 

  Hrvoje Zlatar

  Joel Spolsky about the pitfalls of slow growth.

  business

  • "for pragmatist customers, the first freedom in a rapidly shifting market is order and security. That can only come from rallying around a clear market leader. Once the apparent leader-to-be emerges, pragmatists will support that company, virtually regardless of how arrogant, unresponsive, or overpriced it is."
• 

  Talat Fakhri

  startup

• 

  Jeremy Gollehon

  Business Entrepreneur JoelSpolsky

  • "for pragmatist customers, the first freedom in a rapidly shifting market is order and security. That can only come from rallying around a clear market leader. Once the apparent leader-to-be emerges, pragmatists will support that company, virtually regardless of how arrogant, unresponsive, or overpriced it is."
  • You have to trust your employees to do things that you used to be able to do yourself, and nobody does them better than you.
  • 2 more annotations...
  • • Somewhere, there's someone out there who is taking more risks than you, and that person's business is growing faster than yours, and that person's business may one day come to dominate your industry while yours withers away.
    • I've been working on the assumption that a product naturally creates demand for itself and the sales team just helps fulfill that demand. But I've realized that I have things backward.

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