Six months in is just the beginning
Sometimes I find myself comparing our growth at They Got Acquired to my experience scaling The Penny Hoarder.
I find myself expecting my current business to move faster because of how fast we grew there, how quickly we scaled, how many employees we had to move things along, how many resources we leaned on to grow the business.
Both of these businesses are bootstrapped media companies.
But...
I joined The Penny Hoarder as the third employee in 2015.
The founder launched the brand in 2010.
He grew for FIVE YEARS before hiring a team of full-time employees... and then we scaled.
Five years!
We had lots of resources because the founder had built the business for five years.
Don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle.
So true, I've worked at a few startups as one of the first 5-10 hires and they went on to grow super fast, but they'd all been going 5, or even 10 years before I joined with hardly any huge growth. The businesses that are rocket ships from day one are either extreme outliers, or VC backed and paying a huge amount to acquire new users (sometimes both).
I love this.
Also, I remember reading The Penny Hoarder years ago. Great to see what you're up to now, Alexis. Just signed up for They Got Acquired's newsletter!
Cool! Thanks for joining =)