A few weeks ago, Dagens Industri named me Årets Unga Gasell — Young Gazelle of the Year. BBO has been a DI Gasell company in both 2014 and 2015, which means we have hit their thresholds for revenue growth over four consecutive years while remaining profitable.
I am going to be honest: it feels good. When a major Swedish business publication puts your name on an award for fast growth, the immediate effect is a warm flush of validation. The team was proud. My family was proud. Clients sent congratulations. The LinkedIn notifications were, for a few days, genuinely nice to read.
The marketing leverage is real too. We have updated our email signatures. The Gasell badge will appear on our website and in client materials. In a competitive market where agencies struggle to differentiate, a third-party growth credential carries weight that self-promotion cannot match. I expect the hiring pipeline to benefit for the next year or more — talented people want to join companies that are visibly winning.
This is all true. And none of it is what I want to write about.
What the award measures
The DI Gasell criteria are specific and public. To qualify, a company must show revenue growth over four consecutive years, post a positive operating result, and meet some structural conditions around company age and size. The criteria are well-designed for what they are: a screen for sustained, profitable growth in Swedish companies.
The award, then, is a certification of a particular financial pattern. It says: this company grew fast and stayed in the black while doing it. That is a real achievement, and I do not want to diminish it.
What it does not measure
Here is where it gets uncomfortable. Growth metrics tell you about trajectory. They tell you very little about durability.
The Gasell does not ask: what is your employee retention rate? Are the people who built this growth still here, or have you burned through two generations of staff to achieve it? A company that grows revenue while losing its best people every 18 months looks identical in the Gasell data to a company that grows while keeping its team intact.
It does not ask about unit economics at the engagement level. Are you growing because you have a scalable model that generates healthy margins on each new client, or because you are adding clients faster than you are losing them — running a replacement game that works until the replacement rate slips?
It does not ask about founder sustainability. I work hard. I have always worked hard. But there is a difference between the energized hard work of someone building something they love and the compulsive hard work of someone who cannot separate their identity from the company’s trajectory. I am not sure I always know which one I am doing.
And it does not ask about the quality of growth. Were the clients we added this year the ones we actually wanted — the ones whose problems are interesting, whose budgets support good work, whose industries align with where we are building depth? Or were they the ones who said yes fastest, regardless of fit?
The question I keep circling back to
This is the question that the Gasell does not ask, and that I am asking myself: is this growth the right kind?
We have been doubling revenue roughly every year since I started BBO in 2009. That sounds impressive when stated as a fact. But doubling revenue is not an achievement in itself — it is a consequence of decisions, and the question is whether those decisions are building something durable or something fragile.
There are signals on both sides. On the positive side: our largest clients have been with us for two or more years. Our team is more capable than it has ever been. We have built genuine depth in several service areas. Our Yamondo network gives us international reach that most Swedish agencies our size cannot match.
On the concerning side: we have had stretches where growth outpaced our ability to deliver consistently. We have made hires that did not work out because we needed people faster than we could properly evaluate them. I still struggle with delegation — I know I should be focused on building the company, but I keep getting pulled into client work because that is where I feel most competent.
The Gasell validates the financial outcome of these mixed signals. It does not grade the underlying health.
What I think founders should do with growth awards
Celebrate them. Genuinely. Use the marketing leverage. Put the badge on your website. Update the email signature. Tell your team they earned it, because they did.
And then, privately, write down the five things the award did not evaluate. Not because the award is wrong — it is measuring what it says it measures, honestly and transparently. But because the risk for founders is not that we ignore growth metrics. The risk is that we mistake them for health metrics.
Growth tells you that customers said yes. It does not tell you why, and it does not tell you whether they will say yes again. Profitability tells you that revenues exceeded costs. It does not tell you whether the cost structure is sustainable or whether you are deferring investments that will catch up later.
The discipline I am trying to build — and I am not claiming to be good at it yet — is to hold the celebration and the scrutiny simultaneously. The Gasell goes on the wall. The questions about retention, unit economics, founder load, and growth quality go in the operating review.
I do not know yet how BBO’s story unfolds from here. We are growing, the team is strong, the market is favorable. But if there is one thing I have learned in six years of running this company, it is that favorable conditions are a terrible predictor of whether you are building something that lasts.
The award tells me we have been fast. I want to find out if we have also been right.