Studying business growth from inception into establishment is challenging. We took up this challenge and studied a firm’s developmental process over the span of almost 17 years by analysing more than 860 weekly reports. Drawing on recent developments in the entrepreneurship-as-practice literature, our attention was on the activities and practices that supported the firm’s sustained growth. We find that the firm’s overall activity system periodically shifts in temporal focus between future, presence and past by navigating through four different dualities: (1) detail vs efficiency, (2) rigidity vs flexibility, (3) pressure vs relief and (4) prospection vs retrospection. As we emphasize temporal aspects, our findings extend current business growth theory by adding the dimension of past-oriented renewing to future- and presence-oriented entrepreneuring. We encourage practitioners to implement renewing practices during which they actively renovate and modernize obsolescent parts of their business.