A buddy of mine sent me an email with a quote from a book he is reading – a book written by a well known VC investor in Silicon Valley. I’ve not read this book so I am not sure the exact context around this quote – but to me it kind of stands out on it’s own.

“If you want to build an important company, then at some point you have to scale.” Then after quoting something about how many employees Google and Facebook has today, he goes on to say “So, if you want to do something that matters, then you are going to have to learn the art of scaling a human organization.” Really? It’s just a shame that people read this and believe it. I feel sorry for young sharp kids graduating from college who think they must raise money and hire tons of people in order to matter to customers.

What does building something of importance and something that matters have to do with how many employees your business has? Or the profits it creates? Absolutely nothing. Except to investors like him.

People are building things that matter to a ton of other people – scaling their business (at their own manageable pace) and doing it without thousands of employees. They are building amazingly important things that this particular investor will never hear about. Thank goodness.

Wes