After several rounds of interviews with Google’s founders, they offered me a job. My bank account was diminishing quickly, so it was time to get back to paid employment, and fast. In typical — and yes, annoying — MBA fashion, I made a spreadsheet and listed my various opportunities in the rows and my selection criteria in the columns. I compared the roles, the level of responsibility, and so on. My heart wanted to join Google in its mission to provide the world with access to information, but in the spreadsheet game, the Google job fared the worst by far. I went back to Eric and explained my dilemma. The other companies were recruiting me for real jobs with teams to run and goals to hit. At Google, I would be the first “business unit general manager,” which sounded great except for the glaring fact that Google had no business units and therefore nothing to actually manage. Not only was the role lower in level than my other options, but it was entirely unclear what the job was in the first place. Eric responded with perhaps the best piece of career advice that I have ever heard. He covered my spreadsheet with his hand and told me not to be an idiot (also a great piece of advice). Then he explained that only one criterion mattered when picking a job — fast growth.

This is the same problem that established companies experience. Their past successes were built on a finely tuned engine of growth. If that engine runs its course and growth slows or stops, there can be a crisis if the company does not have new startups incubating within its ranks that can provide new sources of growth. Companies of any size can suffer from this perpetual affliction. They need to manage a portfolio of activities, simultaneously tuning their engine of growth and developing new sources of growth for when that engine inevitably runs its course.

The rate of growth depends primarily on three things: the profitability of each customer, the cost of acquiring new customers, and the repeat purchase rate of existing customers. The higher these values are, the faster the company will grow and the more profitable it will be. These are the drivers of the company’s growth model.

Growing a company is a marathon that requires patience, dedication, knowledge, good decision-making, vision, and the ability to see the big picture.

Is there another way to judge potential? NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them. Jack Welch, the celebrated CEO of General Electric, chose executives on the basis of “runway,” their capacity for growth. And remember Marina Semyonova, the famed ballet teacher, who chose the students who were energized by criticism. They were all rejecting the idea of fixed ability and selecting instead for mindset.

Every organization has two choices. Choice one is to grow. Choice two is to die. If you decide not to grow, it's a clear-cut message to talented people that it's time to leave.

Driven by this basic profit-above-all-else directive, corporations are mandated, in effect, to “grow or die,” a rule also called “the growth imperative.” Of course, a food maker is no different from any other corporation operating in a free economy. However, food companies face special challenges when it comes to obeying the market's growth imperative: because there's a limit—in theory, anyway—to the number of calories humans can consume, competition is especially fierce among food makers for the finite pool of money that consumers can spend.

Growth is an indication of life, so keep your organization moving forward at all times. Having a passion for what you do is crucial. If you can’t get excited about what you are doing, how can you expect anyone else to?

No business can grow forever, simply because no market is infinite. You blitzscale when your market is big or growing fast

Large companies move slowly. Good ideas often died on the vine because they had to be approved by too many people.

The rules that govern the sticky engine of growth are pretty simple: if the rate of new customer acquisition exceeds the churn rate, the product will grow. The speed of growth is determined by what I call the rate of compounding, which is simply the natural growth rate minus the churn rate.

It's important to point out to the executive that when a company doubles in size, she has a new job. This means that doing the things that made her successful in her old job will not necessarily translate to success in the new job. In fact, the number-one way that executives fail is by continuing to do their old job rather than moving on to their new job.

HYPERGROWTH FOR A COMPANY ALSO REQUIRES HYPERGROWTH OF THE PEOPLE INSIDE IT.

I wanted a position that required broad management in a growth enterprise that was doing something I could get excited about. I wanted to be an owner and to be committed to helping a team achieve its goals. Money would be great, but I was happy to be paid based on the value I was bringing to an enterprise, which presumably would be reflected in its success (or failure). The culture of the environment was important to me too. Basically, I wanted to build something. I knew that these factors applied only to those fortunate enough to have significant choices as to what sort of employment they take; most people take what they can get. That said, I figured I was still relatively young and could afford to take some risks and push myself in the direction I wanted to go. I could always declare penance later. By the time I arrived at Manhattan GMAT, I was charged up and ready to make a mark.