Rory Sutherland

You only have a job funding things that grow 10x.

Fund mega growth.

In a world where the best companies grow at 3x, a 2x growth company feels like it could be a contender.

As usual, you express it very crisply.

In a world where the best companies grow at 10x, if you're doing 2x, you just feel like, why bother?

Now, you're going through it.

It will be interesting when we have a longer perspective than three years of this boom to see which were the fast growers that kept growing, which were the fast growers that flamed out because their economic model was wrong, and which were the slow growers that kept compounding and improved in the end.

And all I'll say is, from the dot-com boom in particular, don't assume that the former will entirely track the latter.

There will be companies that have 10x growth where you step back and go, oh my God, the economics were just wrong.

And there will be companies that grow 2x or 3x that keeps compounding at 2x or 3x and fast forward five years, have very compelling businesses.

I'm a mild growth junkie, but I'm not going to be just a growth junkie.

I think I'm not going to comment on the smell of decay, but I do understand 2x growth isn't enough.

One of the things you always have to look at is, is your relative market position decaying?

And that's where you are right.

If you're growing at 2x and there's no one else doing what you're doing and you're in the lead, it's fine.

Don't panic.

The scary thing, and this is what's happening, the closer you are to something that's growing at 10x, the more likely you are to be sucked into that black hole vortex.

And if you've got a direct competitor growing 10x, you are by definition losing every day.

So some part of this is all about where are you relative to competition.

You know, I try to avoid being a hater, so I might do categories on the latter, right?