During a conversation yesterday an Investor/Director questioned a founder about their “slowing growth”.
This didn’t sit well with me but I couldn’t put my finger on why.
Then I realised that the idea of ‘slowing growth’ is damn close to an oxymoron when taken in the wrong context. Take a look at the chart below …..
The chart above represents a company who obviously had fantastic YoY growth early from 2009-2011, and since then has seen that YoY growth slow rapidly heading towards zero. Taken in the context of ‘slowing growth’ this looks pretty damning.
However, I built the above chart using data from this tweet
Guests on @airbnb over New Year’s
’17: 3 million+
’16: 2 million
’15: 1.1 million
’14: 540,000
’13: 250,000
’12: 108,000
’11: 31,000
’10: 6,000
’09: 1,400— Brian Chesky (@bchesky) December 31, 2017
To quote Mark Twain who incorrectly attributed this quote to the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I don’t think the same Investor would be upset if they’d invested in AirBnB in 2011, yet out of this context, they are willing to question a founder with the same line.