Interlude - Index of

Hypergrowth | 69
key is to stay focused. A trick that helps people think about
annual doubling is to break it into quarterly goals. To double
in a year, you must grow by 20 percent each quarter—actually
it’s 18.9 percent, but close enough. Instead of focusing on the
distant, giant numbers, I would focus on the next two quarters.
“You’ve got twenty people today. That’s twenty­four in three
months and twenty­nine in six. Do you have nine people in
your hiring pipeline?” I practiced doing the math for 20 percent
growth in my head. Managers who weren’t on track for the next
two quarters would never succeed at doubling in a year.
••
The first lesson of hypergrowth is Everything is always broken.
Relax, because it’s a good thing. Of course, there are good
problems and bad problems. We need more office space. Our
demand exceeds our production capacity. We have too many
orders to process. I love to hear problems like this. On the
other hand: Everyone is quitting. Sales are down. Our investors
are dissatisfied. Not good.
Problems during doubling tend to be the good kind, and
pointing that out to people can help morale. Our VP of engineering
at the time, Helen Bradley, did this. When people
complained about sharing small cubes that were designed for
just one person, Helen said, “Be careful what you wish for. My
last company had plenty of space—because people were being
laid off.”
Systems and processes that work well for a small company
often fail for a larger one. Accounting software designed
for $10 million in revenue didn’t scale to $100 million. We