(2/6) How to get from $1M to $10M ARR

“The path from $1M to $10M is surprisingly formulaic: 80% follows established patterns while only 20% comes from your unique product and market timing.”

This is part 2 of a 6 part deep dive on how to get from $1M to $10M ARR which is based on my discussion with Guillaume Jacquet, the co-founder of Vasco, his 2nd startup after selling his last one to Lightspeed Commerce (LSPD.TO) post Series B.

Transition from founder magic to specialized systems

Despite these established patterns, too many founders hit a wall after reaching $1M in revenue.

Yesterday, I discussed when, how, and why to narrow down the ICP focus based on my discussion with Guillaume Jacquet, the co-founder and CEO of Vasco.

Today, I want to discuss another reason why growth often stalls after $1M.

Getting to $1M depends on founder magic—that unique combination of product knowledge, hustle, and charisma that you personally bring to every sale.

But magic doesn't scale.

I've watched countless startups stall between $1M and $10M in ARR because founders try to clone themselves on the Go-To-Market side.

They hire "do-everything" people expected to generate leads, close deals, and retain customers—just like the founder did.

This seems logical. You've been doing everything yourself. So naturally, you want to find people who can juggle all these functions too.

Unfortunately, this hardly ever works.

As a founder, you tend to be good at balancing the urgent vs the important. As an employee, when asked to handle the entire customer journey, you will prioritize the urgent over the important.

For example, a salesperson responsible for both finding and closing deals will naturally focus on making their month. As a result, they're scrambling next month because they neglected prospecting while closing.

It's like asking someone to simultaneously cook dinner, clean the house, and teach calculus. They might be capable of each task individually, but forced to do all three at once, they'll do none of them well.

What should you do instead?

Shift from heroic individual efforts to building systems with specialized roles.

First, break down your customer journey into clearly defined stages: Awareness, education, selection, closing, implementation, retention, and expansion.

Then create specialized roles focused on specific parts of this journey.

When each function has clear ownership, you can identify exactly where problems occur.

For example: "We missed our target because close rates were 20% instead of 25%, likely because we generated too many leads from a lower-converting channel."

Now, the objection I hear often when bringing this up early on is that "we're too small to specialize".

This misses the point.

Even with just two people, having clear role definition creates more predictable results than expecting both to juggle multiple functions.

The hardest part of this for founders is often to accept that what got you to $1M won't get you to $10M. You can’t carry your company to $10M - you have to build systems that can grow beyond yourself.

That’s why, over the next few days, I will discuss how to best do this along the following steps:

1. Nail retention first
2. Then build a predictable pipeline engine
3. Followed by mastering the close
4. To then split CS into implementation, retention and expansion

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