@OfficeDivvy tweeted over the weekend announcing their latest blog post, Overnight Success Does Exist!…Not! David Heinemeier Hansson, a partner at 37signals, was speaking at Stanford’s Technology Venture Program about the fact that it took  37signals 10 years to become an “overnight success”. He believes that “accelerated growth is a charade” (his statement is a reaction to vc’s expectation that cash creates accelerated growth) and that it takes time to develop a sustainable, profitable company. Some have called this a defeatist attitude. Far from it. I can’t tell you how many business plans I have seen (actually wrote a couple) that portend huge revenue and profit in a 3-5 year timeframe. These plans are written by aggressive, optimistic and rational people. They are based on well-informed assumptions. They just aren’t very realistic. So what are the critical activities that have to be executed in order to build a sustainable, profitable company (assuming you have a real product and market):

• Have a core team that is committed to success
• Add to the core with the best people you can find…Don’t settle
• Communicate well (both within the core team as well as the company)
• Sell…Everyday
• Understand your key success metrics and watch them
• Manage your cash
• Maintain a sense of urgency but don’t freak out
• Take some risks, try new things (ie marketing, new products)
• Celebrate success…Understand failures
• Remember the Fundamentals
• USE THE WEB
• Establish a solid infrastructure for hiring, managing, paying and, when necessary, terminating your employees

Building a sustainable company is really hard. I am personally on a mission to do this right now. This is my list…What am I missing?

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