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February 23, 2023 | Tom Ballard

“If your start-up is surviving, it’s actually slowly dying”

In a column from WRAL TechWire, Joe Procopio explains why "a sustainable start-up isn’t a successful start-up."

“If your start-up is surviving, it’s actually slowly dying.”

That’s the conclusion of this column in WRAL TechWire written by Joe Procopio, Chief Product Officer at Get Spiffy and the Founder of teachingstartup.com. Get Spiffy has a Knoxville location just down Sutherland Avenue from the PYA headquarters, and the company also announced last week that it had raised a $30 million Series C round led by Edison Partners with follow-on investments from existing investors Bull City Venture Partners, IDEA Fund Partners, and others.

Explaining that “a sustainable start-up isn’t a successful start-up,” he writes that he quickly drove one of his start-ups to a million dollars in annual revenue, yet “learned that sustainability has its limits . . . that’s when I realized I had hit my ceiling. Not in terms of money, but in terms of company growth, professional growth, and personal satisfaction.”

What is Procopio’s secret advice? You’ll need to read the column to find the answer.



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