Expected Growth vs Actual Growth

When we launch a new product or business or blog, initially there will be no takers. Slowly, users will start to trickle in. This goes on for some time. But then something happens. There is an inflection point. Users start to come in droves and business starts growing exponentially. This usually happens when your product or business achieves the magical product-market fit.

But we don’t subscribe to this idea when we start working on our new product/business/blog. We expect and root for linear growth like the one shown below.

In reality, it is an exponential growth like the one shown below.

In the graph, ‘X’ axis is time and ‘Y’ axis is a variable. You can plot any variable that you select for growth, say, revenue of the company, revenue of a recently launched product, number of readers of the blog etc. It is always exponential.

Let us see how this applies in the real world. I picked few publically traded companies and checked their revenue growth.

Consider revenue growth of Infosys since it listed in NASDAQ (circa 2000).

Consider revenue of Google from its various products.

Consider revenue of Apple from its several pathbreaking products such as iPod, iPhone, iPad.

All of them are exponential.