Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned While Growing To 100 Million Users – And Losing $78 Million, reviewed

Imagine what your life would be like if your business suddenly began signing up an astonishing 100,000 new users daily without spending another penny. What if investors started giving your business the attention it deserves?

That’s exactly what happened to Cliff Lerner when he bet his online dating start-up’s fortunes on a then-unknown platform called Facebook. The app achieved explosive growth, and soon after the stock price skyrocketed 2,000 percent, setting off an extraordinary chain of events filled with sudden success and painful lessons. 

This is a great book to read. Some of the business books are a bit of a chore to read, this was one that we looked forward to reading. It is painfully honest at times, and rather than falling for the hindsight bias, that if he is successful now then surely every decision he made before was awesome. Instead he looks hard at what he did, and did not do right. It makes for a much better, much more compelling read. There are several opportunities that he turned down, that in hindsight he explains he would definitely like to have played differently. Hint, if a billionaire comes calling, do at least explore how a possible collaboration might play out.

He also talks about the importance of taking out at least some of the value when your business’s value has reached life changing levels of value. He didn’t and he recognises that this is something he could have done differently too.

Throughout the book there are lots of smart insights, good observations and useful take aways applicable to our own lives and businesses too. This was definitely one of the most useful and enjoyable books we have read and reviewed recently.

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