#3: Speed became king

If the next generation of high growth startup companies
has shown us anything, it’s that “speed is king”.
Companies like Google, Skype and NetFlix have shown
us that it wasn’t about adding more employees and
office space as quickly as possible. It was about
addressing changing market conditions as quickly as
possible with products that could scale big and fast.
Look at how these companies have gone from relative
obscurity to market powerhouses in a matter of years,
shoving giant incumbents out of their way in the
process:
Google - Proved to Microsoft that being the world’s
largest software company was useless if you couldn’t
respond quickly enough to changing market conditions,
like the rise in ad-supported searches. Google is now
worth almost half the price of Microsoft.
Skype - Grew to over 50 million users of its voice over
IP service before big telecom could even begin to
respond to the opportunity (they still really haven’t).
Skype was sold to eBay for over $4 billion dollars after
just 3 years in business.


Big companies
aren’t geared toward addressing rapidly changing
market opportunities – startups are.
The next generation of startups has learned that it’s
their speed that is keeping them ahead, not their size.