In September 2012, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, a seed accelerator in Silicon Valley, wrote a provocative blog post titled “Startup = Growth” that shocked people. In it, he claimed that startups must grow an audacious 10 percent per week in order to be successful. Paul declared: “If there’s one number every founder should always know, it’s the company’s growth rate … if you want to understand startups, understand growth.”1
