[sb8244]

I agree with this, although the timeline differs a bit between companies. I was at Salesloft from 1M ARR -> 100M ARR, so I saw this roughly play out. However, I will say that the founders did an exceptional job staying close to the product well after 10M ARR.

I think a lot of it is due to the VC playbook. The question of "who am I building my business for?" looks a lot different between VC and bootstrap. Once you start getting into heavy hitter revenue (grain of salt, I've never done this as a founder), the machine starts working largely on its own. It's probably more impactful to spend time on the business systems instead of the product.

But bootstrapped founders seem more likely to stay close to the product for longer. Eventually they may want some sort of out, and you see the playbook execute much much quicker.

Now, I have other theories on why it doesn't play out well. Going from 10M -> 50M ARR is a huge hurdle. You have to really level up a lot of the business itself to do so. It might be that it's just not possible for a lot of companies to bridge the gap. I think it's easier to go 50M -> 100M than 10M -> 50M.