It’s Time To Build a Slow Burn Startup

What are the characteristics of companies which are uniquely suited to tough times?

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

A tough economy is a great time to build a slow burn company.

• This may be a side hustle…
• An open source project
• Or a slow burn startup 🔥

Slow burn companies may grow slowly, but can amass tremendous value, and sometimes without giving up much external equity.

Some of my faves: @mailchimp, @airtable, @github, @glossier

All of them took years to succeed, have small teams with outsized impact, and eventually dominated the space that they’re in. How do you build a slow burn company? Some characteristics:

• Single, simple use case
• Small (often developer-led) team
• User acquisition is cheap, simple, self-service
• Margins sustain growth
• Strong community-driven support

Typically, a lot of VC value is driven by high growth and velocity: the difference between getting to $1M annual revenue in 1, 2 or 10 years is significant when you’re building with outside capital. (HT @dafrankel)