Growth is Never a Straight Line

23 Sept 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:56

In this spoken monologue, the speaker reflects on the inherent volatility of startup and portfolio growth, debunking the myth that successful companies follow a smooth, upward‑right trajectory. By zooming out on a typical growth chart, the speaker illustrates that even high‑performing firms experience repeated cycles of “oh shit, oh fuck” before the overall trend points upward. The speaker also shares a personal challenge: maintaining a high level of effort, excitement, and energy consistently over a 13‑year professional career, acknowledging that the sustained daily grind is the most demanding aspect of entrepreneurship.

Chapters

We have ups and downs every single day in our company, and in our portfolio every single time. One thing I always laugh about is every super successful company, people are like, oh, it must have been up and to the right. I'm like, no, they're never up and to the right. If you zoomed out a chart of an up and to the right company, it would be like, oh shit, oh fuck, oh shit, oh fuck, and the general trend line would be like up and to the right. And so every day, there's huge highs and huge lows within our portfolio and within our company, and so when you say like what's been the most challenging or whatever, You know, in a lot of ways, like, I've gotten used to that volatility, and maybe the largest challenge is just, like, the consistent level of effort and excitement I've put into this business for 13 years now has been the vast majority of my life. It's been almost my entire professional career. It's probably just the consistency of, like, doing this every day with a lot of energy, hoping that that, like, compounding leads somewhere, is probably the thing that's been the most challenging.