It’s clear that many $1Bn market segments end up with a few dominant players, sometimes only one (see previous post) and many many small players who have failed to scale, failed to reach that “Pillar” status. Your business is either remarkable or invisible.
The curve is almost always a Power Law curve. The 80:20 rule or these days the 90:10 rule.
As entrepreneurs build their businesses I believe they lack a key element of success. It’s not money, it’s not people, it’s not product. These will all present challenges of course. But I believe it’s an inability to recognize the relevant Scaling model for where they are on the curve. I’m not sure they know where they are on the curve? The moves you need to make to build sales from $1m to $3m are different from $3m to $10m and again from $10m to $30m and from $30m to $100m. Businesses growing at 25.9% always grow 10 times over 10 years (it’s just the math).
Scaling is not just about imagining sales growth however, it’s about building the development team, the sales team, the production team, the marketing team, the finance team, the ops team, the balance sheet in a measured and controlled way, in alignment and safely.
We all need Playbooks and Blueprints. The question is: who can you connect with, that has scaled a business from your part of the curve? You don’t have to do this alone. You just have to want to do it. Or don’t scale.
