Building A Startup That Will Last

For the past decade, growth rates have defined success for most technology companies. Moore’s Law enabled unprecedented computing power, setting off a sprint in winner-take-all marketplaces with increasing returns to scale. Growth-hacking became the entrepreneurial mantra of the early 21st century, resulting in the creation of new tech giants, entirely new industries, and an era in which online community, content, and commerce have redefined how we live, learn, and work. In a marathon, pacing and perseverance are paramount. Few companies from the tech boom of the mid-2000s had the foresight to temper their pace in anticipation of the long journey that lay ahead. Our collective obsession with disruption made us look at decades-old companies as something to dismantle rather than admire. The potential for career-defining gains got the best of many investors and advisors, and we failed to coach founders on the fundamentals of sustainability. We are only now recognizing how untenable the “move fast and break things” attitude was to become. Read more at Harvard Business Review.