thirty-sixSTRATEGY LETTER I: BEN &JERRY'S VS. AMAZON

FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2000

Building a company? You've got one very important decision to make, because it affects everything else you do: No matter what else you do, you absolutely must figure out which camp you're in, and gear everything you do accordingly, or you're going to have a disaster on your hands.

The decision? Whether to grow slowly, organically, and profitably, or whether to have a big bang with very fast growth and lots of capital.

The organic model is to start small, with limited goals, and slowly build a business over a long period of time. I'm going to call this the Ben & Jerry's model, because Ben & Jerry's fits this model pretty well.

The other model, popularly called Get Big Fast ...

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