In 2021 two friends in Tashkent launched a mobile app that helps small shops keep track of their stock. At the end of the first year it had 1,500 users.
After that, the number of users doubled every year: 3,000 at the end of 2022, 6,000 in 2023, 12,000 in 2024 and 24,000 in 2025. In four years the app had grown sixteen times, because doubling four times means multiplying by two, then two, then two, then two.
This year the founders met an investor. Their presentation ended with a bold slide: if the app kept doubling for ten more years, it would have more than 24 million users. The investor did the arithmetic with them. Ten doublings multiply a number by a factor of about a thousand, since two multiplied by itself ten times is 1,024. So the slide was correct as arithmetic: about 24.6 million users.
"The arithmetic is fine," she said. "The assumption is the problem. There are not 24 million small shops in this country." Doubling is easy when a number is small, she explained, and almost impossible when it is large, because the market runs out.
The founders rewrote the slide. The new plan doubled the users for two more years and then grew by a fifth each year after that. It was less exciting, and the investor invested the same afternoon.