We’re too quick to say that every business has to grow and get as big as it possibly can. I don’t think that’s the right path for everyone.
I said it to Anne Stampe Olesen on the Danish-language podcast Den Nye Standard: to me, a pizzeria owner is an entrepreneur too. If you’ve created two or three jobs, you’re as much an entrepreneur in my eyes as if you’d created 100.
I’ve been in both places myself. We’ve had more than 20 employees, and today we’re a smaller but much stronger team. Fewer hands, but more experience and broader knowledge. Quality beats quantity every time.
Around the same time, Louise Herping Ellegaard said something I haven’t forgotten: being a Gazelle is a much cooler label than being a Unicorn. A lot of entrepreneurs have realised there’s value in building revenue and profit instead of betting on someone buying them out.
Brian Mikkelsen thinks Denmark has two big problems when it comes to entrepreneurship: the culture and the tax on capital. He suggested we put entrepreneurship on the school timetable. I’m all for that.
So what makes a good business, when it doesn’t need to get big?