The Easiest Ways to Get From $1M to $10M in Revenue

The most important thing in general, but especially as you make the climb from $1m to $10m in ARR ... is not to chase the shiny penny.  Not to try to do new things where you have very little or no traction.  Assuming you are growing at least 60% Year-over-Year.

You’ve done the Impossible. You’ve gotten 50, 100, whatever # of businesses to pay you $1,000,000 a year. There are 10,000 new apps out there. It’s “impossible” to get to $1m. You did it.

Now, the #1 biggest mistake I see at this phase is chasing new market segments, new categories, new areas where you have 0 or almost no traction. Because you want to grow faster.

We all want to grow faster. Almost none of us are happy with our monthly growth rate once we hit $1-$1.5m ARR. We all want to go and grow faster.

But there is a proven formula to get from $1m to $10m the most efficiently:

• First, double down on what is working. Period. If SMBs are your core, stay there, at least until $10m ARR. Do not chase customer segments where you have zero, or only token, traction. Not at $1m. It’s “too late”. You’ve already established your initial, organic customer traction and segmentation.
• Put proportionate effort into your customer segments. Break your customers into S, M and L. They assign percentages. If 20% of your revenue is Smaller customers, 50% Medium, and 30% large (a not uncommon scenario), align around that. Align your marketing budgets. Your product / dev budgets. Your sales headcount. Don’t chase “whales” and big deals IF that’s not your core. Don’t try to add a magically cheap or free version if that didn’t work before $1m ARR. It’s just going to distract everyone now.
• Go all-in on customer success. Get your NPS up to 60 or higher. Second-order revenue and a mini-brand start to become huge accelerators around Year 3. Make your existing customers happy, and they will both buy more from you, and get you more customers. Period. More here:In The Early Days, You Won’t Have Enough Customers. But Your Mini-Brand Will Come to Your Rescue.
• Hire a real management team. This always works. Hire a VP of Sales that knows what they are doing. Revenue per lead “magically” goes up. Hire a VP of Marketing that knows demand gen cold. You’ll “magically” get more MQLs, and the funnel will be managed more efficiently. Hire a VP of Customer Success that is great … and upsells, retentions, and renewals will all go up. Like magic. More here: How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days. And No, It Wasn’t Magic.
• Raise prices, one way or another. You can just do it on the high-end. You can add more functionality. You can raise prices $1 a month. Different things work for different companies. But usually, at $1m ARR, your product is “underpriced” because you have no brand and no way to justify premium pricing. Find an authentic, customer-centric way to justify premium pricing. And ask for it. More here: A Solution Sale Can Capture 3-20x the Revenues of A Tool Sale. With Almost the Exact Same Core Product. But. 90% of the time don’t raise prices on existing customers. They are too small a cohort for it to matter. And you’ll harm the relationship with the very folks that will be your staunchest advocates.

Follow this 5-step playbook, and I guarantee you will get from $1m to $10m ARR faster than you otherwise would, with less risk and stress and more success. Without having to chase crazy new product segments, categories, or other shiny pennies.

After $10m ARR, or as you come up to it (say $8m ARR), you can start adding more of a budget for more experimentation. You can even put small teams on new things. At $10m ARR, there will be fat and redundancies. There are no redundancies until then.

Until then … if you have something that is working … Stay True.