In 2016, Michael Mauboussin, a highly-regarded researcher and author in the investment industry, co-wrote a research paper published by Credit Suisse titled The Base Rate Book. Mauboussin and his co-authors studied the sales growth rates for the top 1,000 global companies by market capitalization since 1950. They found that it was rare for a company – even for ones with a low revenue base – to produce annualised revenue growth of 20% or more for 10 years. For example, of all the companies that started with revenue of less than US$325 million (adjusted for inflation to 2015-dollars), only 18.1% had a 10-year annualised revenue growth rate of more than 20%. Of all the companies that started with inflation-adjusted revenue of between US$1.25 billion and US$2.0 billion, the self-same percentage was just 3.0%. The table below shows the percentage of companies with different starting revenues that produced annualised revenue growth in excess of 20% for 10 years....