Purposive Drift

Right size triumph

I have been fascinated by 37signals since I first discovered them a couple of years ago, when I came across some remarks about planning by Jason Fried that seemed very close to some of my ideas about purposive drift. As well as following their blog and various articles about them I also devoured their book, "Getting Real". More recently, I have been raving to my friends about David Heinemeier Hansson's presentation at Paul Graham's Startup School at Stanford in April. Today I wandered over to their blog and discovered this nugget of wisdom from David:

"Popular perception holds that companies must always be growing or they’re dying. There’s either up or down, win or lose, success or failure. I think that’s a harmful dichotomy that leads to the death of perfectly viable companies in their quest for constant growth.

Not all companies are meant to have thousands of employees or a billion-dollar market cap. Some companies are meant to be just 10 people or 5 people or just one guy. That’s what their product, niche, or technique is capable of sustaining and there’s absolutely no shame in that. Finding your natural size should be a triumph, not a capitulation."