👋 Hi there - it’s Egemen. Thanks for reading Scalable.
I went to a playbook and podcast rabbit-hole this week for early-stage growth, and well, it’s one big rabbit-hole.
Essentially, there are 4 things to focus for you to focus on to scale from $1 to $10M ARR: enhance your product, refine your go-to-market approach, keep a close eye on finances, and build a strong team.
Today, I’m sharing a tool to help you streamline outbound sales, one of the largest deep-dives we had in a while, a tool to take the hassle of hiring, and a podcast that I really enjoyed this week. It’s one of those LOADED editions.
Here’s a snapshot of what’s on the menu today:
💡 Spotlight: Salesforge
🧠 Deep-Dive: Bessemer’s Early-Stage Growth Playbook
🗺️ Method: Take the Hassle Out of Hiring
⚾️ Catch: The Founding Journey Podcast
☝️ Scaled This Past Week: Driver (YC W24)
💡 Spotlight
Presented by
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🧠 Deep-Dive: Bessemer’s Early-Stage Growth Playbook
I read a comprehensive growth playbook by Bessemer Venture Partners recently.
Scaling from $1M to $10M in annual recurring revenue (ARR) is a big jump, and it requires some smart choices across these areas:
product development,
go-to-market (GTM) strategy, and
team building
First things first, here’s the link to the full article, it’s a long read, but I recommend going through the whole article if you have 30 mins. For this week’s deep-dive, I’ve summarized key takeaways.
When you’re moving from $1M to $10M ARR, it’s all about transitioning from a product that has a few nice features to one that really offers a complete platform.
At $1M ARR, you might have around 400,000 users who love what you’re doing. For example, Netlify was in this spot and managed to grow its user base to 1.5M over two years by rolling out features like Deploy Previews and Netlify Functions.
Find ways to reach new customers and keep them engaged. Add features that not only satisfy existing customers but also open doors for upsells.
Look for natural upsell triggers.
Just like Twilio did by introducing features like SMS and three-way conferencing, which helped them expand their product offerings and keep users coming back.
As you grow, it’ll be time to shift from being the founder who does all the sales to building a solid sales team. In the early days, it’s totally normal for the CEO to lead the charge in sales to build up a solid customer base. But to really scale, you’ll want to bring on sales people. Here’s a simple game plan:
Start by hiring one or two salespeople to figure out what works before expanding the team.
Establish a customer success function early on, which not only drives revenue but also helps you gather feedback to improve the product.
Teleport did this by identifying their ideal sales process before ramping up their team, which really set them up for success.
I’ve also had a chance to listen to Vishal Sunak’s take on The Startup Playbook on this - it’s a nice conversation. Especially, Vishal’s “People Framework” when it comes to hiring is something to listen to.
As a founder, you want to surround yourself with people who fill in your gaps and bring in new skills.
Building a rockstar team is key when you’re scaling from $1M to $10M ARR.
BVP’s case study highlights bringing on a sales expert by $1 million ARR, a product expert by $2 million ARR, a marketing expert by $4 million ARR, and a finance expert by $8 million ARR. This way, you’ll have a strong team that can tackle growth challenges without missing a beat.
👉 Scalable partners with best-in-class publications.
Take a look at what our readers also enjoy reading.
🗺️ Method: Take the Hassle Out of Hiring
As we just wrapped up, whether you’re scaling to $10M ARR or $100K ARR, building a world-class team is absolutely crucial, and often difficult.
BELAY takes the hassle out of hiring.
Accomplish More. Juggle Less.
When you love what you do, it can be easy to take on more — more tasks, more deadlines, more hours – but before you know it, you don’t have time to do what you loved in the beginning. Don’t just do more – do more of what you do best.
BELAY’s flexible staffing solutions leverage industry experience with AI systems to increase productivity without sacrificing quality. You can accomplish more and juggle less with our exceptional U.S.-based Virtual Assistants, Accounting Professionals, and Marketing Assistants. Learn how with our free ebook, Delegate to Elevate, and leave the more to BELAY.
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Let’s find out what we can do better.
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⚾️ Catch: The Founding Journey Podcast
This is a new podcast in the space - if you’re a founder, you should check it out!
Each week Michael Houck is interviewing a world-class founder about their unique path and actionable insights on fundraising, growth, market validation, hiring, scaling, and leadership.
I really enjoyed the first episode with Tyler Denk 🐝: a great story around launching in a competitive space, fundraising, and company culture.
👉 Visit Founding Journey for more - definitely one of the best startup newsletters.
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☝️ Scaled This Past Week: Driver (YC W24)
Driver (YC W24) could potentially be every product person’s and founder’s dream tool.
They’ve raised $8M in seed funding to simplify technical documentation and speed up product time-to-market - it’s the scale of the week!
The platform can create technical support documentation 50% faster, saving engineers half their workday.
It can automate source code documentation in just two hours, compared to the usual three months, and helps onboard team members twice as quickly.
Their product “drives” (I had to do it) simplicity, time and cost savings, fewer issues, and most importantly - happier customers!