In How We Hit $912M in Sales, Jack Dangermond, the co-founder of mapping software maker Esri (creators of ArcGIS), talks about bootstrapping his company over the course of 40 years, creating an organization with nearly $1B in annual sales (and no outside investors or debt). This is the "marathon" approach to growth.

The New York Times recently wrote about two rival business intelligence startups, RJ Metrics and GoodData, with two alternative growth and financing strategies. Startup guru Steve Blank also offered a helpful Q&A as a follow-up to the article. In a way, both of these companies are sprinting toward growth, though each has a different source for their energy (GoodData = VC dollars, RJMetrics = customer dollars).

Paul Graham has perhaps the ultimate "sprint" mentality for startups. He put it straightforwardly: "Startup = Growth". Graham says "you can use growth like a compass to make almost every decision you face." He thinks that businesses that obsess over growth have a different DNA (thus a different trajectory) than the ones that simply manage for it, "in the same way a redwood seedling has a different destiny from a bean sprout."