Because, unless you're something like a utility that just keeps on chugging at a steady state, most large businesses don't just "steady state" - they either grow or die, largely because some other competitor will grow faster and eat their lunch. Think of Yahoo - when they stopped growing it was largely because companies like Google and Facebook did a better job of attracting users.
To me your Yahoo example seems to prove the opposite of your point - growth stalled and yet it didn't die. It not only employs thousands of people but also earns billions in profit.
Make no mistake, while Yahoo hasn't died YET, that is exactly where it's trajectory points unless it is able to significantly grow revenues in its core business.
But I think it's a good example of a company that makes a lot of sales and profits but because it's not growing like some of its peers is considered a zombie or lame duck. It's the 3rd largest in traffic after all!
Confusion arises because who gets to say that's the metric that counts? What are your criteria for a business to be considered alive and healthy? Why are those your criteria?
Growth is not inherently positive, it depends on context. For example, if I tell you my cancer has grown 500% this year, it wouldn't be good news. And before you say this is a stretched analogy, it's not necessarily positive in tech either - if you're growing while bleeding money, all you're doing is bleeding more money. So how do you reach your conclusions?
Confusion arises for a lot of reasons, but cancer definitely isn't a useful analogy to discuss a blog post that starts "Most high-growth businesses..."
It's definitely the metric that counts for the kinds of businesses Andreessen Horowitz cares about.
Microsoft and Yahoo are particularly confusing examples, because they are both very large companies who enjoyed a lot of first mover advantage, but were started almost 20 years apart. And then ended up as very direct competition, before settling down as symbiotic partners. If you really want to use an example from biology, you should look at gut bacteria.
Pretty much sums it up, if you are not growing some business it means your dying, because every business that isn't a state mandated monopoly dies eventually. Older more established companies will have parts growing while other parts are fading, that reinvention cycle is critical to staying relevant. If you're a one product company and your growth slows, and you aren't growing the next thing, it means you're now heading toward non-existence.
I completely agree, but this might seem counter-intuitive to this forum, given the fundamental advice to new entrepreneurs: hyper-focus.
Once a company reaches a certain maturity, it "knows" that it needs to diversify to some extent. But it's hard to generalize about diversification strategies because it's tough to agree on the right metric for company maturity. Too many of the historical examples we could use for discussion directly relate to changes in what the state has considered a monopoly over time.
But is that really true? Companies like Basecamp seem to do fine with flat to modest growth. Yahoo is a good example, too. It remains a top 5 or 10 property with large revenues and modest profits. And yet it's pretty much considered a zombie.
