Efforts to improve the organization need not jeopardize your business.

We have supported change leaders in multiple industries at various stages of their growth. Our experience suggest that these ten characteristics indicate that the company is approaching a Scaling Junction.

  • Exceeding capacity in current operational systems.
  • Increased market demand outpacing product/service delivery.
  • Notable surge in customer acquisition costs.
  • Difficulty maintaining product/service quality with growth.
  • Leadership roles stretching thin across growing responsibilities.
  • Emerging gaps in skills within the team.
  • Processes that worked well are now bottlenecks.
  • Challenges in maintaining company culture.
  • Investor pressure for scalable growth models.
  • Strategic decisions are increasingly complex and frequent.

If this is what you are experiencing, your business has matured beyond the capacity of your organization to sustain it. Stakeholders will have to revisit their expectations and appetites for investments to achieve the next supportable level of higher growth. Something major will have to shift.

 

There is a natural cycle for businesses that flows through three broadly-defined stages of maturity: Small, Medium-sized and Large. They each have measurable attributes that reveal where your company is in its journey and help to plot a safe course to achieve your goals.

For example, YoY ARR Growth, Net Dollar Retention, and the Rule of 40, which according to the experts [1][2][3] collectively indicate a software company's readiness to scale and the efficiency of its growth​​​​​​:

  • Small Businesses: Likely to have variable YoY Revenue Growth, with NDR being a critical focus as they build their customer base. They may not meet the Rule of 40 as they invest heavily in growth over profitability.

  • Medium Businesses: Typically see steadier YoY Revenue Growth and have a stronger focus on maintaining high NDR as they expand. They aim to balance growth and profitability, approaching or meeting the Rule of 40.

  • Large Businesses: Often experience moderate YoY Revenue Growth due to their scale, with a significant emphasis on maintaining NDR to ensure customer loyalty. They are more likely to adhere to the Rule of 40, balancing efficiency and expansion efforts.

 

These can be helpful benchmarks when contemplating how to optimize the performance of your business. We utilize these as points-of reference in our own framework. Furthermore, we believe that lessons learned and leading practices are portable across industries in general. And that they can be applied across industries at any stage of the life cycle to businesses at every scale to derive superior outcomes - without reinventing anything.

 

With this perspective, we believe we are uniquely qualified to guide you through this process for your organization.

Continuously reshaping your mindset to keep up with shifting market behavior

Start up

Forging your winning idea into a successful, money-making business

Scale up

Orchestrating the activities of your business into a cohesive operation

Stabilize

Leveraging organizational strengths to exploit new opportunities

Adapt