[jwr]

> I've always felt this, I've never seen a business actually _do_ this.

I do this. My business has linear growth (which means if you look at year-to-year percentage increases, they decrease over time). I'm very happy with it — I have no pressure from VCs to achieve crazy user growth at all cost, no pressure to show exponential growth. The business works well, the customers are happy, things are good!

There are many businesses like this, they just tend not to be the fashionable ones. You won't read a techcrunch article about one of them. Press will call them disparagingly "lifestyle businesses".

And yet — these are the businesses that make most sense for the users! In a company like that, business goals are 100% aligned with user goals. The business makes money if the users continue paying the subscription fees, which they will do if they are happy and get value from the software.