Aging & Wisdom Quote by Roy H. Williams

Growth is sexier when the denominator is small, and Roy H. Williams is puncturing the lazy romance around “percent gains.” The line reads like a simple business truism, but its real target is the way entrepreneurs, investors, and business media weaponize percentages to manufacture inevitability. A startup that doubles revenue sounds heroic; a mature company adding the same absolute dollars can look stagnant, even if it’s doing the harder, rarer thing: expanding at scale without snapping its own supply chain, culture, or margins.

Williams’ intent is partly diagnostic, partly corrective. He’s reminding you that “large percentages” are often a phase, not a personality trait. Early-stage growth can come from winning a handful of customers, entering one new channel, or simply starting from near-zero. That’s not nothing, but it’s not proof of durable advantage. Mature businesses don’t lack ambition; they’re wrestling gravity. The market is more saturated, competitors are smarter, internal complexity is higher, and regulators and customer expectations tighten. The math and the ecosystem both conspire against fireworks.

The subtext is a warning about benchmarks. If you expect a grown company to behave like a scrappy one, you’ll misread competence as complacency and turn steady compounding into a moral failure. Read another way, it’s also an ego check for founders: high early percentages don’t mean you’re a genius; they mean you’re early. The cultural moment behind it is our addiction to hockey-stick narratives, even when the adult version of success looks like quieter, less tweetable mastery.