The Velocitation Conundrum

Focus. Speed. I am speed. -- L. McQueen, 2006

I had a thought provoking conversation today.  Having spent most of last year in an accelerator - The Startup Factory, moving fast has become the norm.  Getting traction quickly is all that matters.

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And that thinking doesn’t only apply to small startups.  Any company engaged in a hypercompetitive B2C industry seems to share a similar mantra.
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.  – R. Hastings, 2011</blockquote>

But what if you are winning.  Or maybe you already won.  No longer the scrappy startup, now you are the 800 lb gorilla.  Can your company afford to lift off the gas?

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Speed is often expensive.  Amazon AWS is fantastic for its low startup costs, excellent tooling, and comprehensive features.  But it is also a relatively expensive infrastructure for larger, more mature organizations.

Startups are all about CAC vs LTV of a customer.  But the LTV of the customer increases if the cost of serving that customer decreases.  Thus containing cost by eliminating unnecessary flexibility can be the difference between a viable business and a failure.