Seth Godin is an american entrepreneur, author, marketer and public speaker. Seth posts almost a blog a day onto his site, and gets nearly 540,000 views per month. In his blog entitled “The Dorm-room startup mindset“, Seth talks about how businesses need to start out small and grow over time. Seth develops the idea that when you are starting a business you are not trying to sell it for a huge payout, you are trying to grow it over time.
This idea is important because today too many businesses are focusing on growing at an unrealistic rate. The primary goal of most startups today is to make a profit. However many people believe that more profit is better and miss building the foundation of their company. When companies try to grow to fast they run the risk of running out of finances. A rapid increase in productions corresponds to a significant increase in accounts payable, many startups cannot afford the cost. Indeed, another way in which dorm-room mindset is beneficial is that it helps ensure that the companies operations stay consistent. Two big problems associated with operations are quality and opportunity. When businesses scale up too fast not only do they run the risk of reducing the quality products that the business differentiates itself on, but they run the risk of missing out on other opportunities that may have been present and overlooked in the scaling phase.
Every entrepreneur wants to grow their business as fast as possible, however they need to ensure that they grow at a sustainable pace while staying true to the value proposition that the company believes in.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Godin
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2014/10/the-dorm-room-startup.html