In less than 2 years from its launch, YouTube sold for $1.65 billion to Google. You hear startup stories like that and you start to ask yourself "What's taking so long in my business?"
It's not taking too long for your startup to be successful. You probably just don't have realistic expectations!
Companies take a long time to become successful, if they even make it at all. The fact that some of them start and blossom so quickly doesn't mean all other startups by comparison are failing. It just means a few of them were incredibly fortunate.
Notice I say fortunate, not "lucky". Luck is what happens when you hit the lottery. Fortune is what happens when you work toward a goal and achieve it. The YouTube guys were fortunate, not lucky, so let's not take anything away from them.
Don't Let Investors Tell You
There's no magic date or number that indicates that you've made it any faster than you should have, or that you're falling behind. The fact is no one knows how long it's going to take you to "hit it big", no matter what your definition of "big" is.
Venture Capitalists will often tell you that "big" is a sale or an IPO that occurs in less than five years. While that's a really nice goal, and it happens to fit well within their business model, the fact is 99% of companies don't fit into that model (VC's invest in less than 4,000 businesses a year, yet 550,000 are started every month).
Of course if your goal is to get funded by a VC, then by all means your expectations for the businesses performance better be in line with theirs. Just keep in mind even the businesses that they fund rarely meet those expectations!
Don't Let the Media Tell You
I led off with the story about YouTube because it's so spectacular in nature. The media gravitates toward the spectacular, which makes you think that after you've burned through Forbes magazine, every company must be doing that well.
The truth is even the ones that are being profiled are rarely doing that well. Most stories in the media are propped up on a single discussion point while conveniently overlooking key details like "the Founder just got fired" or "we're $20 million upside down in debt to our investors". All you read about is "Over 1 million people are already using their product!"
The media is giving you the highlight reel, not the entire game. That's because companies don't just shoot up overnight (although I wrote a whole book on the contrary), they are built over time with consistent dedication and focus. Unfortunately, that story doesn't sell magazines.
Don't Let your Staff Tell You
As it happens, your staff probably reads the same headlines that you do. They compare their performance in the company, the company's overall performance, to what's happening in your startup to the headlines they read.
In some cases, your staff probably came aboard to live the dream of wild success. Everyone wants to be one of the 1,000+ employees that became millionaires at Google. So if your staff feels like they're not on that magic gravy train, they may start looking elsewhere, or pressuring you to deliver on that dream.
If your staff is looking for overnight success - for a company that they can work at for two years and become millionaires - let them keep looking. No one can realistically promise guaranteed overnight success, although there is no shortage of attempts. Most people would be fortunate (not lucky!) enough to be involved with one company that does well, let alone trying to bounce from many in hopes they make it.
Set your Own Damn Expectations
Only you can determine how big and how fast your company can grow. If your expectations are that you're going to take the company public in three years from launch, that's great. If you think you can pull that off through your own actions then I'll be the first to say "hell yeah, go BIG!"
But if the only thing setting your expectations are what investors are telling you, what you're reading in the press, or what your employees are making up on their lunch hours, you're setting yourself up for complete failure.
The barometer of your success should never be graded with someone else's milestones.
Set your own damn expectations!