Value Before Growth

Do you know how much Facebook spent on servers in their first few months?

$85/mo.

Today they spend billions of dollars on their server infrastructure.

Do you know how Facebook paid for their initial servers?

With Google Adsense and banner ads.

Today they have their own auction based ad system.

You don’t need to first build scalable infrastructure

in order to build a scalable business.

You don’t even need to start with a unique business model.

You can piggy back on others until you figure yours out.

The single domino early in the business model validation journey

is delivering on customer value

even if it’s only at micro-scale.

If you can demonstrate this repeatedly,

do you then get a crack at building for scale.

Establishing repeatability is a necessary pre-condition for growth.