In 1998 Google burst onto the Internet scene and went from $0 market cap to $1 billion in 8 years. This was unheard of growth! A typical Fortune 500 company takes 20 years to achieve that same $1 billion mark.

However, since 1998, the time to grow from $0 to $1 billion market cap has steadily decreased. Facebook did it in five years, Tesla in four years, Uber in two years and Snapchat and Oculus Rift did it in just under two years!

Exponential Growth

According to the book Exponential Organization (by Salim Ismail, Michael Malone and Yuri van Geest) an “ExO” or Exponential Organization is an organization that display an exponential level of growth.

As you can imagine, any organization that undergoes exponential growth also undergoes exponential change. This change can easily destroy the organization completely or severely impact its growth unless it is handled correctly.