The following is from a Wall Street Journal entitled How to Survive Being an Overnight Success. Getting quick success as an entrepreneur sounds great, doesn't it? But this article points out that there are some challenges with trying to grow too quickly. The words and idioms we will focus on are in blue.
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It seems like a dream scenario for a startup: Sales surge, and business takes off.
But then what?
Any number of things can turn a small business into a rapid success—from a TV appearance to great connections at a trade show to a viral online video—but sustaining that success forces an entrepreneur to make tough choices. For instance: Should the company immediately ramp up production and risk lowering product quality? Bring in more workers to help an overstressed staff, and risk destroying company culture? Try to live off the original innovation, or plow lots of cash into R&D to develop new ones that might not pan out?
How do I meet demand?
It’s the immediate problem a company must deal with when it hits the big time quickly. All of its systems are set up to handle a certain level of production and sales. And suddenly it is swamped with orders.
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Here's our vocabulary for this article extract:
(to) surge - to increase quickly
(to) take off - to become popular; to turn successful
(to) ramp up - to increase
(to) live off - to make enough money from something
(to) plow lots of cash into - to invest a lot of money in
(to) pan out - to be successful
(to) hit the big time - to become very successful or popular
swamped (with) - to be overwhelmed with; to have more than one can manage
