Growth: The Oxygen Supply

Growth solves nearly everything, and its absence poisons everything. A growing startup can hire, raise, and keep morale high through chaos. A flat one starts eating itself: infighting, blame, and departures follow stalled charts.

So the CEO's standing order is: never lose momentum. Pick the one metric that represents real value delivered, make the whole company know the number, and remove whatever blocks it. Growth hacks and vanity metrics don't count; you can't fake retention for long.

Momentum is also easier to keep than to regain. If growth stalls, the fix is almost never a rebrand or a press push. It's going back to users and making the product something more people love.