Follow to Following Ratio?

In your experience, does the Follow to Following ratio really matter if you are just starting out an account and are trying to grow it? For example, in FollowLiker, should I be using the follow/unfollow option? Does having a lot of "following" do more harm than good?

It can make your account look a bit messy in the beginning but it's without a doubt more efficient following 1000 of people vs 500 people (that's an example).