Why is Scaling So Difficult?

Linear growth doesn’t expect much; with exponential growth, it's a different story

Scale isn’t about doing more of what works; it’s about navigating entirely new territories with different rules, different problems, and different solutions.

Amazon in 1995 = “We sell books”

Amazon in 2024 = “We sell more books AND we sell everything else AND we deliver it to you in less than 24 hours AND we have Amazon Web Services AND...”

Linear growth doesn’t expect much from founders.

More in = more out

Simply multiply what already exists.

Linear growth is where the rate of change is constant.

With exponential growth, the rate is constantly changing.

In Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson note:

“Economic growth is not the addition of sameness... when productivity surges, what we get is not more of what we had, but new things we never imagined.”