Should you product manage for rocket-ship growth or modest growth? In many business circles this question would be treated as a joke. “Of course you should manage for rocket-ship growth!”
In this post, we make a case for the opposite answer. We explain why slow growth has been our go-to approach at Feature Upvote and share the few principles that have allowed us to keep it that way for over 6 years.
As company founders we’re often force-fed a rigorous diet of high expectations.
We’re submerged in success stories about double digit month-on-month growth and neon headlines: “How Slack Became the Fastest Growing B2B SaaS Business (Maybe) Ever”. And we’re expected to approve. To try and imitate.
Business success, particularly in the tech world, is about being the fastest growing, biggest company. Not necessarily the most profitable, or even profitable at all. But the most ambitious company, where customer growth always rockets upwards.
And so, according to this attitude, it’s our job as founders to make this happen.
Ambition is everything
Well, that’s not how we see it. Do you know how we begin our company meetings? With a reminder that Feature Upvote is a low-stress company. This has been company policy right from the beginning. Steve McLeod, our founder, says:
I don’t want endless ambition to drive our company. Endless ambition leads to endless exhaustion. Exhaustion doesn’t benefit our team, it doesn’t benefit our customers, and it doesn’t benefit our families.
Being content with modest growth allows our team to maintain a healthy balance between work and everything else in their life. It assures us – and our customers – that our company is stable and healthy and will be around for many years.
If your company is high octane then it’s likely that many people in your team are overworked, stressed and anxious. A few office benefits like ping pong tables and yoga classes are not enough to combat a culture of stress and endless expectation that can quickly turn toxic.
A new measure of success
At Feature Upvote we focus on something besides growth: our work-life balance. For us, this is an important measure of the success of our company. It’s right up there with Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) and New Customers Added.
We appreciate that this is unusual. We’re a business right, not a charity or social club?
Good businesses think creatively. And if you can do that about your product why not step back and look at the big picture as well? What does it mean to run a successful business? What does this look like for every member of your team? Do we really need to rule the world?
For us, success means running a modestly profitable company that we enjoy working for but doesn’t dominate our lives. We want to have time for friends, family, and fun, and to make sure work doesn’t negatively impact how we feel while at work or elsewhere. To achieve this level of ‘success’ we offer all team members:
- Shorter hours
- Flexible hours
- Remote working
- Considerate acceptance that stuff happens and team members shouldn’t be blamed for not being ‘tough enough’ to keep going regardless
This policy requires an acceptance that it may impact growth. We need to rigidly focus on what we can do in the time available. Monthly meetings, for example, are restricted to 30 minutes. We have stringent criteria for building new features and creating new content. We decide not to attempt more than is realistic given the size of our team.
For us the advantages of having a good work life balance far outweigh the disadvantages. Knowing that we can see our kids grow up, be there if they are ill, or entertain family for a week visiting from another country, all makes us happier more productive people.
Feature Upvote continues to grow: but gently, rather than with the burning acceleration of a rocketship.
Managing for low stress
It’s not enough to decide ‘I want our team to have a good work-life balance’ and try and set up some kind of flexible working or shorter hours, if your company idolises high growth. You’ll soon get push back from managers intent on 20% growth month-on-month or investors insisting on a hefty return on their capital.
To actually become a lower stress company, you need to step away from a growth at all costs mentality. Instead of your entire company being aligned around output or outcomes you need to align it around your people.
But what does this even mean? We’ve decided on a few fundamentals that guide all our business decisions:
- We remain self-funded, so we can concentrate on our customers rather than satisfying the high growth expectations of investors.
- We pursue slower-burn marketing strategies and avoid anything that requires an ongoing daily time commitment.
- We make our product as self-service as possible, so we don’t need to be on hand to demo the product for customers and answer tons of questions.
- We aim for achievable rather than ambitious growth. There is no pressure to achieve double-digit growth every month.
- We get pretty comfortable about saying ‘no, we can’t do that’. We don’t enjoy saying this, but we make sure we do say it when necessary.
We know this approach isn’t for everyone. It might feel too radical, or too naive. What’s funny though, is that we don’t feel all that radical or naive. We’re pretty normal people.
Were humans harmed in the making of your product?
We love our product and know it helps make our customers’ lives easier. It leads to increased transparency and collaboration within companies, and time saved processing feedback. All good things.
However, we openly acknowledge that our product isn’t important enough for us to get super stressed about. Our world won’t collapse if our company ‘only’ grows by 1% in one month or our churn rate peaks above 5%.
Our world might collapse, however, if we ignore ourselves, our friends and our families because of work and how it makes us feel.
Few, if any, tech products are worth the human cost of creating them in a damaging, stressful environment. We know Feature Upvote isn’t.