Growing from $5M ARR to $7M ARR in 5 months

We hear a lot about companies that plateaux around $5m ARR.?

That’s only the case if you don’t take a meticulous approach to data-led decision making and think you can approach things in the same gritty way as when you first launched your startup.

From refining internal processes to delineating between strategic and tactical, I cover four key areas we honed in on to achieve this phenomenal growth.

1. Delineation between strategic and tactical?

From early 2021 to the end of 2023, we had a Senior Leadership Team which grew from 5 to 9 people over that time. It worked incredibly well for the first 2 years, but as the business changed, and the organisation grew, there needed to be clear delineation between strategic and tactical

We disbanded the SLT, and created an exec team of 5, and senior management team of 7, with some overlap between personnel. The former focuses exclusively on strategic, the latter primarily on the tactical (with some strategic).

This has done amazing things for speeding up tactical execution, but given space for more strategic conversations.

2. Why avoiding hiring outside heavy hitters was crucial

It’s tempting to start spending big salaries on external talent, particularly those who have been at startups that have scaled beyond $5m ARR.

However, we wanted to give the first opportunity to those who brought us to this point to prove what they can achieve within the new senior management team.?

I think it’s hugely important to show faith in these team members and empower the next generation of leaders within our business. Startup life is super intense and fast-paced - so those who have stuck around and given 100% deserve this opportunity.

This article highlights how much of a powerful message internal promotion sends to the rest of the business. It’s crucial they know how much we value the dedication, hard work and passion they’ve displayed!

Not only that, but having spent a long time at the business, they really understand our North Star, our culture and most importantly our product and how it serves the Connectd community and the early stage space.

3. Matching opportunity with capacity and capability?

Between international expansion and new revenue opportunities (many of them in-bound) managing opportunity with capacity, and staying focussed, is key.

It’s been an exciting year so far for us, however we can’t get ahead of ourselves. For the most part, much about startup life is about managing your resources and making best use of them - ESPECIALLY once you become venture-backed as VCs want to see consistent growth.

When looking at which opportunities to take, we ask ourselves these questions:

Do we have the resources to make the most of it?

Does this align with our OKRs? (Objectives and Key Results)?

Will this take us closer to breaking through our next growth barrier?

I can’t stress enough how important that second question is.?

Those agreed sets of OKRs are data-backed and discussed at length before we put them together. Everything we do throughout the company trickles down from them, and when an opportunity crops up, referring back to them reminds us of what we need to focus on.

4. Hardcore focus on core metrics

Scaling can challenge the success of underlying unit economics - getting the whole business aligned on core metrics as we grow, and tying them to OKRs has been key.

We already have a deep understanding of the significance of these metrics in terms of accelerating growth, but this has been driven home even more through several investor conversations.

Before setting our OKRs, we thoroughly analyse all of our core metrics, rank them by priority level (based on our current stage) and then formulate our OKRs from those with the highest priority.

The most crucial part of this is informing the whole business about them so EVERYONE is aligned and has a clearer picture of what we need to achieve.?

Forbes mentions how 72% of employees understand their company’s vision when OKRs are used, whilst only 50% get it when they aren’t - that’s nearly a 25% difference.

Overall, we’ve experienced nothing but exponential growth since for the last three years which has only been made possible by consistently challenging ourselves, remaining agile and analysing our data/processes.

The startup life requires you to act with speed but also precision. If you can’t keep up with the intensity, this isn’t for you.

To those who continue to stay on their A game, keep smashing it!