Recently, I’ve been obsessing about the Lindy Effect, an observation about the lifespan of stuff like technology and ideas.

In it’s original form, the Effect observes that every additional day of life achieved implies an even longer life expectancy yet.

Or, in plain English: on average, you’re halfway there. So there’s likely another half of the life of an idea or technology still to come.

Applied to startup companies, that means that, on average, you’re about halfway through your growth cycle, about half as big as you’re going to get.

Therefore, if you tell me your company is going to double in size in the future, I should probably believe you. But if you project 10x or 20x growth, I should be dubious.

The problem is, to double in size, you usually only have to do the kinds of things you’re already doing, just a bit more efficiently, or maybe with a little more economy of scale. But to hop up an order of magnitude, you need to do completely different things, in ways completely different from how you’re doing them now.

Psychologically, that’s challenging, the startup version of the Innovator’s Dilemma. You’re running the company the way that you’re running it because it works, because it’s what’s gotten you to where you are. But, to keep growing, to keep from stagnating indefinitely, you have to leave that safety behind, start trying out new things, think in bigger new ways, and risk failure all over again.

Which is hard. And stressful. But also necessary. It’s the only way you can build a company that doesn’t just double once, but somehow pulls off the exponential trick of doubling again and again and again.