One of the phenomenons we encountered a year ago was money coming in faster than we had budgeted for in a significant way. Now, yes, it is a high class problem to have and it’s easy to think that that would make for some nice short term profits. Well, we’re focused on growing and building a large business in a small, fast growing market with strong competitors. The interesting thing is that we’re scrappy as part of our company culture but with this market opportunity we had to loosen the purse strings for growth.
Here’s what we did as a result of growing faster than expected:
- Increased our marketing budget substantially
- Started working with recruiters to find additional team members as we’d tapped our existing team for referrals (half our employees come from referrals and we do a $1,000 employee referral bonus)
- Bought MacBooks and giant monitors for everyone
- Added catered Flying Biscuit breakfast every Monday morning
Could we have saved some money and gotten by in a cheaper manner? Yes. Did we feel like with our size and scale we could afford to experiment more and enjoy some of life’s niceties a bit more? Yes. There’s no right or wrong answer but we felt that loosening our purse strings for growth was a great move and we’re already seeing results.
What else? What changes have you made as your business has grown?
David Cummings on Startups 
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