From start-up to centaur: Leadership lessons on scaling

Scaling is no easy feat. Even companies that develop successful products have a greater than 80 percent chance of failure.¹ Fast-growth companies face constant growing pains, especially at critical inflection points, and investors attribute 65 percent of failures in their portfolios to people and organizational issues.² Best-in-class B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) company innovators can serve as examples to founder CEOs and top teams in any industry, with vital lessons on how to lay the groundwork for scaling and achieve sustainable growth.

This playbook is based on interviews with CEOs and top teams of successful, B2B SaaS centaurs (companies with at least $100 million in annual recurring revenue [ARR]), in-depth analysis of public data, and discussions with relevant experts and industry veterans (see sidebar “The scale-up research methodology”). It focuses on how successful, scaling companies set up their organizations, talent, and operating models, and it explores which elements are needed to achieve rapid and sustainable growth. It considers the growth challenges founder CEOs and management teams face³ and offers a set of actions to guide them in becoming scale

From start-up to centaur: Leadership lessons on scaling

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From start-up to centaur: Leadership lessons on scaling

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