This drive for any business to continually grow (and this isn't a Valley specific problem) is a topic I could rant about for hours. From my understanding growth is necessary in public companies so shareholders can make a profit (assuming the company isn't big enough to issue huge dividends). What perplexes me is why people cared about SecondLife growing if it never tried to go public (beyond the initial investors caring).

I think (aiming for) growth is also necessary to offset risk. Naturally business will not be equally good from year to year. If you don't create surplus in the good years, you'll find yourself in trouble in the bad years.

Growth is like... the opposite of surplus.

How so?

What fauldsh said, basically.

Imagine that you've got a bunch of VCs who have decided to give you millions and millions. Yay money. You now have a surplus, but you have not grown. To grow, you have to spend that money. That's the entire reason they gave you money. Goodbye surplus.

Because any surplus saved for the bad years is money that could have been invested in further growth.

Indeed. Of course all companies eventually mature so that their growth potential goes down. The logistic sigmoid is remarkably hard to escape.