Growing slowly is the fastest way to build a sustainable startup.

From the outset that sounds like a contradiction, right? How could "growing slowly" and scaling possibly be congruent? They are if we take the time to understand that scaling is only possible once we've identified the assumptions in our business that are actually true.

As it happens, most Founders don't realize that "growing slowly" isn't about the long-term growth curve of a startup, it's about the near-term growth curve, the part where we are still trying to figure out exactly how this thing works.

Amplifying Mistakes With Acceleration

The case for acceleration is that we'll get to where we need to be faster. But that rests on one (often) broken assumption — that we're acc...