The purpose of this study is to empirically examine whether the implications of the life cycle model hold on the firm performance path in term of growth and profitability of a sample of Swedish small and medium-sized enterprise. The study is composed of a sample containing 26721 Swedish SMEs across six industries for the period 2008-2011. The empirical results confirm a clear pattern of the performance life-cycle process among Swedish SMEs. Young SMEs, generally, tend to have smaller size but on average a higher performance than their older and larger counterparts and as they age and grow in term of size, their performance rate decreases in parallel with life stage. Accordingly, the performance path of Swedish SMEs included in the sample follows a systematic and predictable pattern associated mainly with the life stage.