Growing Pip Decks at breakneck speed then hitting the breaks
Q+A with Pip Decks founder Charles Burdett on turning off the Meta ads growth engine, letting go of acquisition dreams and redefining success
Charles recently posted something on Linkedin that made me immediately want to reach out and chat to him for Broken Growth.
“Growth is seductive. It feels like momentum, success, proof that you’re doing something right. In truth it’s a massive ego boost. But growing too fast can quietly turn into a liability.”
I’m excited to share the best bits of our conversation with you. There aren’t many businesses that have experienced the profitable, breakneck speed growth to a multi-8 figure valuation and then actively chosen to redefine success and scale back like Pip Decks has.
We dug into the back story, why the growth phase felt like being rats on cocaine water, and how Charles defines success today.
Enjoy.
ML: You started Pip Decks in 2019 and grew the business extremely quickly. Take me back to the start.
CB: I’m a product designer by trade and created Workshop Tactics to help product designers run better workshops. I created an Instagram page and began boosting a few posts. Before long I was putting a dollar in and getting ten back because we had crazy product-market-channel fit on Meta ads. It felt insane not to follow that traction. And so we did.
ML: What was the investment and team context at this point?
CB: We had no external investment. We were first order profitable with our ads from the start and we doubled our revenue year on year for the first 3 years.
The team scaled alongside the revenue to 16 employees. It was very much a make hay while the sun shines mentality. We built the team around our capability to create really effective ads and landing pages that enabled us to sell Pip Decks to new audiences.
ML: In your LinkedIn post you mentioned that “the hardest part about growing a business isn’t growing too fast it’s knowing when to slow down”. Can you tell me more about that?
I started out earnestly trying to create this slow growth thing - I’m really attuned to your kind of approach. But then we discovered how well ads worked for us. The way I describe the growth we experienced is like we were rats in a cage and someone put in a bottle of cocaine water. We got a sip of it and then did we want normal water anymore? Of course not.
My mild claim to fame now is that if we had entered The Times’ fastest growing company list, we would have been number one.
It’s so easy to be seduced looking at growth dashboards every day. We could see sales increasing hour by hour. You feel invincible. The business was kind of on autopilot and it felt very good to have a growing, profitable company.
ML: As you alluded to on LinkedIn, the business is now on a different trajectory. What changed?
As time went on, ads got more expensive and less reliable. The majority of our customers were brand new - not repeat - which wasn’t sustainable.
Black Friday 2024 was an alarm bell moment. It’s usually massive for us and for the first time last year it wasn’t. That was the signal that the party (as we’d known it) was over. In the end we decided to switch the ads off and we’ve scaled the business right back including letting go of a lot of the team. It was drastic and painful but we would have completely died if we didn’t make these decisions because the ads as growth engine model wasn’t sustainable at the level we were at.
ML: What’s the situation today?
We're now back to the core four employees focusing on making things that help our existing customers and connecting with them via our mailing list. I’m loving connecting with people who already use and love Pip Decks and am seeing the benefits of doing things that can’t be measured.
I love speaking to customers, getting critical feedback and using it to improve our products for them. Despite the hardship we faced recently, I've been having more fun and working harder than I ever had before.
ML: What does successful growth mean to you today?
Growing a business that's doubling every year becomes a very attractive acquisition target. Pip Decks especially: it is profitable, has unique IP, and a product that doesn’t expire. For a while I became fixated on what we’d be valued at and when the right moment was to cash out and exit the business.
When we turned the ads off and let go of most of the team last year I decided that I wasn’t doing this to sell the business. I like working on it. I’ve heard of loads of founders who sell and feel utterly depressed that they don’t have their thing to work on anymore.
I've done the fastest growth in the country thing and it was amazing for getting an attractive acquisition profile. But then you realise that actually having ten million quid in the bank will not materially improve my life, which is an insane thing to hear myself say.
Now we’re contracting as a business which is a terrible prospect for an investor. But I don’t need investment. I get to work with my best friends. I have full flexibility in my lifestyle. I feel way more connected to my own business and not scared of experimenting in different areas and with different revenue streams because we’re no longer working towards the highest possible valuation.
Dumb stuff like we have a brand that has cartoon characters. Why aren't we making a comic strip? Why don't we do more animation? Why not be more fun? You can’t experiment like that when the goal is to build the highest potential valuation to potentially be acquired.
Now, I have no interest in growing for growth’s sake. We’ve done plenty of growing. We’re building differently now and I’m excited to see where it will take us a year from now.
Big thanks to Charles for chatting with me. I admire how frank he is about the high highs and low lows that come with nailing product channel fit and growing a business via social media ads to the extent Pip Decks did.
This stuff is messy! But no explosive growth phase can last forever. If you’re currently dreaming of nailing growth on a specific channel, this conversation was a great reminder to get clear on what success means to you before the rocket takes off and remember that it won’t fuel your flight indefinitely.
Chat soon
Matilda
Thanks for reading. If we haven’t met I’m Matilda Lucy, a Digital Strategist working with brands who are making the real world a better place to be. You can find out more about my work on my website or book a free intro call here to discuss working together :).
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Loved this, we need more reminders that even people who build hugely successful businesses struggle with growth at all costs. I wonder if Charles would do it all again or, if he had the chance, would keep his team small