How to Grow a Company Fast

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By Richard Rosenblatt
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Grow a Company Fast

As a transparent company that’s in the spotlight during an intense period of innovation and growth in our industry, we at Demand Media think it’s important to share with other aspiring entrepreneurs and managers some of our most valuable learnings. In the spirit of continued growth and success of the internet industry on the whole, we thought it would be appropriate to use our own fastest growing property, eHow, to demonstrate how to grow a company fast and effectively, according to our own experiences.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

Patience
Ambition
Determination
Concentration
Phenomenal people and talent
Vision
A sense of humor and humility
Ability to make tough decisions

Step 1

Be willing to bet everything on your management team, because fundamentally, you are.
Step 2

Assemble a board that brings more than just money to the table.
Step 3

Prioritize entrepreneurship (including previous CEO experience or small business ownership) as a mandate of recruiting and employee development. At Demand Media, a significant proportion of staff and most of our executive team members have been CEOs or small business owners.
Step 4

Recognize that failing quickly and iteratively is one of the best ways to succeed. We call this "failing fast," and we live by it in launching new online properties and site features, religiously practicing test-driven development across our software systems, and fundamentally wiring it into our Demand Studios content creation ecosystem.
Step 5

Keep the office fridge packed with a variety of caffeinated beverages. And in general, go out of your way to make it easy and convenient for your heads-down, hard-working team to stay heads down and working hard. Ergonomics, onsite services and even food & beverages are an important part of this.
Step 6

Make innovation an "always on" part of the product development process, not something that's revisited periodically. Reward and make noise about innovation and creativity internally.
Step 7

Enable and motivate your most valuable contributors to find new roles and sometimes new locations that suit them best.
Step 8

Be as transparent as you can, without sacrificing your competitive advantage. As it happens, social media, used correctly, is one of the best ways to be open. With it, you can learn from your community AND integrate its power into your product and how you serve customers. There is no better growth catalyst than the motivated and enlightened crowd that is loyal to your brand and product.
Step 9

Recognize that when something isn't yet being done or isn’t yet seen as valuable by the market, that's not necessarily a reason not to do it. In fact, it's often a reason to do it.
Step 10

Measure everything.
Step 11

Keep measuring everything.

Comments

Susang6 said

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on 10/25/2009 I enjoyed the read. I own a business and it is true that you must devote your life in order to be successful, have key people and a lot of caffeinated beverages. Step 10 and 11 very important. Thanks for a great article.

ramblin62 said

on 9/5/2009 Excellent tips "from the field." Good, motivated management and strong, appreciated staff makes all the difference. A dedicated board complete with diverse experience helps steer the ship. TX!

Tippy said

on 9/5/2009 Very good, Mr. Rosenblatt. I love the instructions for keeping the workers productive. If anyone knows how to grow a company fast, you do.