Research & Tools / Hypergrowth / What to do

Before the session

Start with a 90-minute working session involving the CEO and the leaders of Product, Finance, Sales, and Marketing. The point is to have the owners of the key assumptions making decisions together, not to maximize attendance.

Send a one-page brief containing the five questions and the agreed facts: target arithmetic, recent revenue mix, current margin, and whatever cohort-retention data exists. Do not include a proposed verdict. A session framed as a marketing recommendation will get marketing’s answers; a session grounded in shared facts can produce a company answer.

Bring a list of which of the eight conditions you can support with evidence and which you cannot. Assign unresolved assumptions to owners and reconvene when the evidence is available.

Settle one thing first. If the target came from the board, find out whether the CEO endorses it or is relaying it for the team to test. Those require different conversations.

The five questions

1. What does winning mean here?

What it decides. Which curve the board and leadership team are currently assuming. Treat the answer as a hypothesis that questions 2 through 4 will test.

Ask everyone to write one word — Supernova, Shooting Star, Compounder — before anyone speaks. The exercise exposes disagreement before hierarchy suppresses it.

A good answer

One word, the same word, and someone can say why in a sentence that refers to the product and the buyer rather than to ambition.

A worrying answer

Three different words, or one word that nobody can connect to anything except the number. Also worrying: the answer changes when the CEO speaks.

What the data says

The archetypes are not grades. Compounders in this dataset include profitable companies that reached $20M on very little capital. The failure mode is not being a Compounder, it is being a Compounder measured as a Supernova.

2. Where will we play?

What it decides. The customer, use case, budget source, and buying motion. Deal size and the marketing organization follow from those choices.

Start with the strategic choice, not a row in the revenue model. Which buyer has authority? Are you creating a category and new budget, or displacing an incumbent at renewal? Can the buyer self-serve, or does every deal require a committee? Does regulation narrow the market or slow adoption? Marketing can bring market and buyer evidence; Sales, Product, and Finance must confirm what the company can sell, deliver, and retain.

Then test that choice against the arithmetic. $19M of net new ARR in 18 months is roughly four enterprise deals a month at $250K, 21 mid-market deals at $50K, or 3,500 self-serve conversions at $300 a year, before churn.

A good answer

A named customer and use case, a credible budget source and buying motion, and evidence that the company can reach and serve them. Then one revenue row, or a deliberate mix with a stated split, that supports the choice.

A worrying answer

“Everyone” as the buyer; a category-creation story funded by incumbent-replacement economics; or the mid-market row with no self-serve floor or expansion mechanism underneath it.

Record whether a self-serve entry point exists today or has a dated plan. “It’s on the roadmap” with no date and no owner is an answer to question 4, not this one.

3. How will we win, and how will it scale?

What it decides. Why the chosen buyer will choose you, and whether the assumed growth curve is arithmetically available.

Answer both parts: what advantage makes the product the buyer’s choice, and what mechanism lets revenue grow faster than seller headcount? The scaling mechanism might be usage or credit pricing, account expansion, deal size, an ecosystem, or an installed base.

A good answer

The customer advantage and the scaling mechanism are both named, and somebody can point to an account that grew materially in the last two quarters.

A worrying answer

Per-seat pricing where customer headcount is the only multiplier, next to a Supernova target.

What the data says

Among the 13 companies in the condition matrix that also have dated $1M-to-$20M intervals of 18 months or less, each could be mapped to at least one scaling mechanism. Nine used usage, credits, or another built-in expansion mechanism. Wiz, Deel, Harvey, and Legora relied on larger deals and deeper account penetration. That makes this a question about mechanisms rather than one preferred pricing model.

Also ask what capability change the plan is betting on, and what happens if it lands six months late. If the plan depends on no explicit capability change, check whether it contains an implicit one.

4. What would have to be true?

What it decides. Everything still in dispute, by converting it into a list.

Take the eight conditions one at a time and sort them together into evidence, assumption, and missing. This turns a disagreement about the target into assumptions the team can test.

Do not settle an assumption by assertion. Write it down, give it to whoever is best placed to check it, and set a date to reconvene. Two conditions are often knowable within a week: last quarter’s revenue split by new logo, expansion, and one-time consumption, and whatever cohort retention the product can already produce.

A good answer

Most conditions land in evidence or assumption, with named owners, and nobody is embarrassed by the missing pile.

A worrying answer

Everything lands in evidence with no data behind it. A room that has no assumptions has not been honest yet.

5. What will we be measured on?

What it decides. Whether you can be judged fairly against the answer to question 1.

Agree the ARR definition in one sentence — run-rate, contracted, consumption, or gross — and agree it will be the same sentence in the board deck and the press release. Agree what gross margin is today and what the model assumes it becomes. Agree what the board’s model assumes about churn. Report cohort retention beside ARR as a standing metric rather than on request.

Then choose the leading indicators that fit the growth curve: activation and paid-cohort retention for self-serve; pilot-to-production conversion, reference velocity, and account expansion for enterprise; proof propagation and partner-sourced pipeline where those mechanisms matter.

A good answer

A small set of definitions and metrics that Finance and Product can produce on the agreed cadence without a special project, plus leading indicators that match the chosen motion.

A worrying answer

A scorecard built on MQLs next to a target that requires activation and expansion. Those measure different companies.

Reading the answers together

Lay the five answers side by side and ask whether they reinforce each other. If they do not, change one of the choices rather than pushing harder against all of them.

Three patterns worth recognising:

Supernova aspiration, displacement budget, committee sale

The company may still grow quickly, but the where-to-play choice does not support a Supernova assumption unless deal size, account expansion, or another mechanism can overcome the friction.

Supernova aspiration, regulated enterprise buyer, committee sale

Abridge, Harvey, Legora, and EliseAI all grew quickly through exactly this friction — as Shooting Stars and Compounders. The conditions are not missing, they are pointing at a different curve.

Strong on speed, empty on durability

In the condition matrix, the clearest difference between the Shooting Stars and the cautionary cases is the quality of the durability evidence. That is partly built into the archetype definitions, so it is a diagnostic rather than a predictive finding. The practical point still holds: ask for retention and the basis of the revenue number before treating early speed as durable growth.

If your answers look like the third pattern, question 4 has already told you which assumption to go and test first.

What each function brings

The answers are distributed across the leadership team, and the decision belongs to the team together. The titles below describe responsibilities, not a required org chart: at a small company the founder may be both CEO and product leader; elsewhere Product and Engineering may be separate. What matters is that the people who own the customer, business model, product experience, and technical growth loop all weigh in.

The CEO

Question 1, and whether they are willing to be the primary channel in year one. In most Supernovas in this dataset there was no marketing department during the ramp; founder communication was the distribution.

Product and Engineering

The adoption or evidence loop, the self-serve entry point, and cohort-level instrumentation for activation, retention, expansion, and product cost. Together they must say how the growth loop will be engineered and what capability change the plan is betting on.

Finance

The ARR definition, gross margin, cash conversion, and whether the capital plan funds the loop before it funds paid distribution.

Sales

Quota and capacity assumptions, and pricing and packaging shared with marketing, since both shape acquisition, adoption, and expansion economics.

Marketing

Can lead positioning, buyer language, brand, and proof distribution. It can co-own packaging, activation, community, and the self-serve entry point with Product and Sales, and bring customer evidence into pricing. It cannot decide the margin, the roadmap, or how the founder spends their time.

If you cannot convene the room

Two versions of that. If you are interviewing, the five questions are interview questions, and the answers tell you more about the company than its recruiting narrative. Ask question 3 first; it requires a customer advantage and an economic mechanism, not enthusiasm.

If you are in the seat and the session keeps not happening, run questions 2 and 4 on your own with whatever Finance and Product will give you, and bring the result as a set of assumptions you would like checked rather than as a position. A list of testable assumptions is much harder to wave away than a disagreement about a number.