With linear growth in #customers/revenue/profit, percentage growth in #customers/revenue/profit drops every year.
In the limit it becomes zero.
Because of that, I think few CEOs would be happy with it in the long term.
Yes, you may be profitable and the best in your branch of work and be the largest in your branch of work and be a good employer, but if you’re close to that point and see a smaller company in your branch of work grow and thus take market share, you should be concerned that they will out-compete you in the long term.
This is completely infeasible for a publicly traded company or one one VC investors unless you want nobody to invest in you.
So what are these businesses? How do you prevail when your competitor isn't playing the same game? Better mousetraps don't matter when someone else is selling 100x than you using VC powered marketing.
DDH has a cult of personality, and Basecamp wouldn't be the same without it.