Joel Spolsky has an essay on fast vs. slow. It's thirteen years old at this point, but still worth a read, I'd say.<p>The takeaway of it is: Fast vs. slow isn't an absolute thing. It's about what your market is, and what kind of culture you want your company to have. You can be successful either way.<p><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html</a>
TL;DR: "The new fast company isn't fast at all. It's gradual, slow, measured, and organized. It's making small bets. Which, it turns out, is the fastest way of all to get back to where you want to be."<p>As I work on building my startup it is great to have this reminder, it is about calculated actions that over time become more efficient. I have been working on celebrating the small successes and managing my expectations on a daily basis.<p>I am betting on the long-term compounding interest of my calculated actions, be it writing a line of code, talking and connecting with customers, getting advice from other founders or relaxing with a beer to recharge.
I don't disagree with the general argument that degradation happens gradually, and 'truly successful' companies are built gradually. That said, I hate statements like this: "A better strategy is to start doing smaller investments with longer time horizons. Just like chili, low and slow is the way to maximum flavor."<p>Why? The taste of chili is maximized by cooking it slow.. but the taste of french fries is maximized by cooking them quickly. There's nothing inherently good about doing things slowly. So please give us some evidence that investors should be making smaller investments over longer horizons? Perhaps there's data to show that longer horizon VC investments provide higher risk-adjusted returns.. but I haven't seen it.. and Seth's statement to provide any sort of weight, it would have to be included.<p>Way too pseudo-intellectual for me with nice meaningless platitudes.
Reminds me of the chapter in Good to Great regarding the pushing of the flywheel:<p>"Good-to-great transformations look dramatic and revolutionary on the outside but actually are organic, cumulative processes on the inside. There is no single defining action, no grand program, no one lucky break or miracle moment. Sustainable transformations follow a predictable pattern of build up and breakthrough – like pushing on a giant, heavy flywheel. Average organizations follow the “doom loop” pattern. They try to skip buildup and jump immediately to breakthrough. Then, with disappointing results, they lurch back and forth, failing to maintain a consistent direction."
Interesting read. As someone trying to build my own company it's nice to have Seth reminding us that the companies that have sudden surges in users is not the norm. For the ones that do have a sudden increase, most were working diligently for many months or years before.<p>This part rang particularly true for me: "The new fast company isn't fast at all. It's gradual, slow, measured, and organized. It's making small bets. Which, it turns out, is the fastest way of all to get back to where you want to be."