He's not wrong. Growth above all else is just toxic.
In the dot-com era, I worked for a custom software shop. This was a time when you could quote $1MM for a dynamic web site, and get it. We built fancy marketing sites and then moved into other bespoke systems using mostly Java and a little Cold Fusion, and we did well in this niche in our region.
But the C-suite got the growth bug, and I didn't have enough stock to stop it, and so we did this crazy land grab thing with outside investment and mergers with other smaller shops elsewhere (NYC, inevitably SF), and all of a sudden instead of a profitable regional player we were on a treadmill race with others (like Agency.com, etc) that really only had room for a couple "winners."
If we'd stopped at 100-150 people, we could have been a very successful profitable player in Texas. And we'd probably either still be in business, or would have been acquired by somebody who wanted our client base (heavy O&G, obviously), and I'd have seen some upside.
None of that happened because c-suite wanted to get big and go public and cash out with $20MM each or whatever. It was a dumb plan.
In the dot-com era, I worked for a custom software shop. This was a time when you could quote $1MM for a dynamic web site, and get it. We built fancy marketing sites and then moved into other bespoke systems using mostly Java and a little Cold Fusion, and we did well in this niche in our region.
But the C-suite got the growth bug, and I didn't have enough stock to stop it, and so we did this crazy land grab thing with outside investment and mergers with other smaller shops elsewhere (NYC, inevitably SF), and all of a sudden instead of a profitable regional player we were on a treadmill race with others (like Agency.com, etc) that really only had room for a couple "winners."
If we'd stopped at 100-150 people, we could have been a very successful profitable player in Texas. And we'd probably either still be in business, or would have been acquired by somebody who wanted our client base (heavy O&G, obviously), and I'd have seen some upside.
None of that happened because c-suite wanted to get big and go public and cash out with $20MM each or whatever. It was a dumb plan.