photo by emilybean

I recently read a post by Fred Wilson that got me thinking about how the ability to operate in lean and agile ways makes it possible for an enterprise, business or nonprofit to scale.  He describes the growth Tumblr, of one of his portfolio companies that is one of only 57 web properties that serve over a billion pageviews worldwide each month.

A billion pageviews a month?  Two billion eyeballs?  That boggles my mind.  And what is truly impressive is that Tumblr was able to do this on a $5mm capital investment.

How?  Tumblr figured out how do more with less – always an appealing skill.  They are a small but good team that works very hard on maintaining high service quality and developing new features that are easy to use.  I set up a Tumblog last year and it was surprisingly easy to do.

Here’s what I got from all of this:

Scaling is strategic growth of a good team

The new big is less, not more

Service plus pleasant user experience equals a billion pageviews

Scale  is based on a package that embraces all of the above as well as a few other components such as empowered and engaged communities,  creative technology support,  slow and concentric impact and growth.  We who work in the arts have always done more with less.  It will be interesting to see how our field scales to a billion pageviews.

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Hoong Yee