Description
Are You Ready to Scale Sales? How Fast?
These two questions are mission critical to the success of any startup, product launch, or market expansion. Yet, too often we rely on gut feel—or let irrelevant signals like a recent fundraise or comparisons to past unicorns—to drive our decisions.
The Science of Scaling offers a rigorous framework for founders, executives, and investors to calculate the answers using their company’s actual performance data—not wishful thinking.
Drawing on insights from hundreds of startups over the past 25 years, Mark Roberge—Founding CRO at HubSpot, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and Co-Founder of Stage 2 Capital—reveals the five most common reasons revenue acceleration efforts fail:
- Premature focus on top-line revenue over consistent customer value creation
- Inadequate, non-data-driven definitions of product-market fit
- Misunderstanding the GTM capabilities needed before hiring salespeople
- Front-loading sales hires instead of pacing hiring based on readiness
- Confusing temporary spikes with lasting competitive advantage
Whether you're a founder starting to scale, an investor guiding your portfolio, or a GM launching a new product, The Science of Scaling is your operating manual.
Don’t guess. Don’t gamble. Scale scientifically.
Table of Contents
Introduction xi
Part I The Science of Scaling Framework: Calculating Whether We Are Ready to Scale and How Fast 1
Phase 1 Product-Market Fit 3
Chapter 1 Is Product-Market Fit ... a Feeling? 5
Chapter 2 Defining the Leading Indicator of Retention (LIR) 9
Chapter 3 Defining the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) 17
Chapter 4 Instrumenting the LIR Measurement for Scale 21
Phase 2 Go-to-Market Fit 27
Chapter 5 The Product Fits, but Does the Go-to-Market? 29
Phase 3 Growth and Moat 39
Chapter 6 How Fast Should We Scale? 41
Chapter 7 Building the Bottom-Up Scale Model 51
Part II Aligning the Go-to-Market System with Product-Market Fit 59
Chapter 8 Defining the Go-to-Market System 61
Chapter 9 The Optimal Design of the Go-to-Market System Is Contextual 67
Chapter 10 Aligning ICP with the Pursuit of Product-Market Fit: Early Adopters Fostering Rapid Learning 75
Chapter 11 Aligning the Go-to-Market Process with the Pursuit of Product-Market Fit: Founder-Led, Learning-Oriented 81
Chapter 12 Aligning GTM Hires with the Pursuit of Product-Market Fit: Half Product Manager, Half Account Executive 89
Chapter 13 Aligning Demand Generation with the Pursuit of Product-Market Fit: Rely on Personal Network and Referrals 101
Chapter 14 Aligning Pricing with the Pursuit of Product-Market Fit: Price for Commitment, Not Profits 105
Chapter 15 Aligning GTM Compensation with the Pursuit of Product-Market Fit: Equity Instead of Variable Commission 107
Chapter 16 Aligning Go-to-Market System Outputs with the Pursuit of Product-Market Fit: LIR Achievement 109
Part III Aligning the Go-to-Market System with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit 117
Chapter 17 Aligning ICP with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit: Expand from Early Adopter to Early Majority 119
Chapter 18 Aligning the Go-to-Market Process with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit: Codified and Repeatable 123
Chapter 19 Aligning GTM Hires with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit: Process Builder 155
Chapter 20 Aligning Demand Generation with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit: At Least One Scalable, Measurable Medium 161
Chapter 21 Aligning Pricing with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit: The Intersection of Customer ROI, Scalable Unit Economics, and Substitute Options 185
Chapter 22 Aligning Go-to-Market Compensation with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit: Balancing Customer Retention and Profitable Growth 189
Chapter 23 Aligning Go-to-Market System Outputs with the Pursuit of Go-to-Market Fit: Leading Indicator of Unit Economic Achievement 193
PART IV Aligning the Go-to-Market System with the Pursuit of Growth and Moat 203
Chapter 24 Aligning ICP with Growth and Moat: Scale vs. Experiment vs. Ignore Segments 205
Chapter 25 Aligning the GTM Process with Growth and Moat: Reinforced 211
Chapter 26 Aligning GTM Hires with Growth and Moat: Process Executors 223
Chapter 27 Aligning Demand Generation with Growth and Moat: Multiple Mediums Tightly Aligned with Sales 231
Chapter 28 Align Pricing with Growth and Moat: Establish Moat and Raise Price 239
Chapter 29 Align GTM Compensation with Growth and Moat: Add Promotion Paths 245
Chapter 30 Aligning Go-to-Market System Outputs with Growth and Moat: Accelerate While Preserving PMF and GTMF 253
Conclusion 261
Appendix: The Potential Impact of AI on the Science of Scaling Framework 264
Notes 271
Acknowledgments 278
About the Author 279
Index 281
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