Ambition doesn't have to mean size

"So, where do you see Foxnice in five years?"

The person asking usually wants a number. More people. More offices. More cities.

I usually disappoint them.

The question behind the question

We've been taught that ambition has one direction. Up and out. More turnover, more employees, more square metres. If you don't want to grow, you must have given up.

When I say I don't want to be the biggest agency, I can see people filing me under "not very ambitious". Nice guy. Small plans.

I think they've got it backwards. I'm quite ambitious. I just don't aim at size.

What I actually want

Let me put it plainly, because "I want freedom" sounds like a postcard.

I want our own products to stand on their own. PagoCRM, the booking engine. Not as side projects, but as things clubs and businesses use every day and pay for every month.

I want to be very good at a few things instead of acceptable at many.

I want to decide what we build, at the speed we choose, without asking anyone.

And I want to keep doing it with Yeray, the way we started, without someone else at the table who joined for the exit.

None of that requires being big. Some of it is actually harder if you are.

Wanting to be the biggest is the quickest way I know to lose your freedom.

Why size gets in the way

Size has a cost that nobody puts in the pitch deck.

Every person you add needs to be paid every month, whatever happens. Every office needs filling. Every new city needs a reason to exist. And soon the company isn't doing what you wanted. It's doing whatever keeps the machine fed.

And if you grow with someone else's money, there's a second machine on top of the first. Theirs. It also needs feeding, and it only eats growth.

I've seen enough to know I don't want that. Not because it's wrong. Because it's not what I'm aiming for.

Ambition, redefined

So here's my answer to the five-year question, for the record.

I don't know how many people we'll be. Probably not many.

I hope our products pay for more of our time than they do today. I hope we're still choosing our clients, and not the other way round. I hope we can still say no without checking the bank balance first.

That's an ambitious plan. It just doesn't make a good chart.

Some people want to build an empire.

I'd settle for a company where nobody can tell me what to do on Monday.

On reflection, "settle" is the wrong word.

P.S. If you asked me the five-year question and I gave you a number, I was being polite.