I met with a very interesting company yesterday that is reaching nearly 41 million visitors per month. We talked a lot about monetization strategy. At the end, the CEO mentioned that one of his very well known investors is encouraging growth over monetization. I thought about this a bunch last night. How should YieldBuild balance growth objectives with revenue objectives? My instincts tend to focus on how to figure out a scalable revenue model that will support growth. At our stage, we are still perfecting the product, but I spend 25-35% of my time working on revenue generating stuff (strategy, partnerships etc).
My best conclusion at this point is growth is one half of the equation. You have to understand who your customers are, why you are growing, and what you need to build to grow more. Focusing on growth gives you simply focus. Focus to build a great service that people want and use. Once it’s large enough, then figure out the second part. Many people have said this before. The interesting thing is I’ve only heard this from venture backed companies where people are shooting for huge outcomes. Which leads me to my second thought. When revenue and growth come together early in a companies life, is there a dramatic impact on growth that stunts the ultimate size and opportunity of the business? Or, maybe the question should be does becoming a good small business make it more difficult to become a good large business?
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