If a company hasn't even tried to get revenue, then the sky's the limit. But as soon as it does it gets actual numbers, and those numbers are usually not as big as anyone's wildest dreams. Sometimes they're downright depressing, and they lead to that hard and unglamorous slog of optimizing business model and pricing strategy and such.
In big companies this often manifests in the form of the project cancelled right before (or right after) it goes to market. A project that's still pie-in-the-sky tends to excite the sales and business folks, but once it gets closer to go-to-market you start getting real numbers. A lot of times this leads to cold feet, the project loses favor, and sometimes gets cancelled right before it ships.
Reality is never as much fun as dreams.
The counter-argument though is that rapid growth in the beginning is necessary to have any chance of getting really big.
I've got an effort out there right now that's growing but has a revenue model in place. I know for a fact that if I take the revenue model away it will grow faster, and I've been having a huge debate with myself on this. The revenue isn't huge and the growth is slow-- do I trade that small amount of revenue for larger growth on the promise that I can get more revenue later? It's a tough question.
If a company hasn't even tried to get revenue, then the sky's the limit. But as soon as it does it gets actual numbers, and those numbers are usually not as big as anyone's wildest dreams. Sometimes they're downright depressing, and they lead to that hard and unglamorous slog of optimizing business model and pricing strategy and such.
In big companies this often manifests in the form of the project cancelled right before (or right after) it goes to market. A project that's still pie-in-the-sky tends to excite the sales and business folks, but once it gets closer to go-to-market you start getting real numbers. A lot of times this leads to cold feet, the project loses favor, and sometimes gets cancelled right before it ships.
Reality is never as much fun as dreams.
The counter-argument though is that rapid growth in the beginning is necessary to have any chance of getting really big.
I've got an effort out there right now that's growing but has a revenue model in place. I know for a fact that if I take the revenue model away it will grow faster, and I've been having a huge debate with myself on this. The revenue isn't huge and the growth is slow-- do I trade that small amount of revenue for larger growth on the promise that I can get more revenue later? It's a tough question.