Organic Growth
Categories: Company Management
Natural growth. Growth just because the customers love the product, use it, and pay for it.
Think: Facebook in the early days. It grew as a site just because people were lonely or horny or curious or all family-connecty. Organic. Facebook didn't advertise or market, really. It just existed and attracted users organically.
The opposite? Amazon in the early days. Yes, Amazon was attractive to users (when it only sold books). But it advertised the snot out of itself on Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft, and anywhere else. Yes, the growth was organic...but it bought it. Meaning that it spent a fortune in marketing, hoping to distinguish its brand above all others. Oh, and it did.
So then...what's totally non-organic growth?
Growth by acquisitions. Like...had Amazon ponied up to buy books.com and barnesandnoble.com and bordersbooks.com, it certainly could have doubled or tripled or quadrupled its size, but it would have bought it presumably at the cost of great dilution to its shareholders.
Way more profitable to just kill your competition. Oh, and it did.