Once a startup is growing extremely fast, does that growth rate persist or does it typically decelerate?

Jamin Ball · Jan 10, 2024

There are very few genuinely special markets, and within them very few companies that exercise the right to be special — the universe of businesses that can sustain 30-50% growth at $100-200M of ARR is tiny

Very few markets contain a product differentiated enough to support sustained growth at public-market scale

25:48 20VC: Did Figma Kill M&A Markets in 2024, The Three Biggest Mistakes Made in Growth Investing, The Three Requirements Companies Need to Go Public in 2024 with Ed Sim and Jamin Ball

Jamin Ball · Jan 10, 2024

Companies peter out at $50-70M of ARR mostly for basic reasons: the market wasn't that big, and they never broke into the enterprise where the big dollars are

Early adopters in Silicon Valley can carry you to a point, but unit economics are hard to make work at scale servicing small customers

27:07 20VC: Did Figma Kill M&A Markets in 2024, The Three Biggest Mistakes Made in Growth Investing, The Three Requirements Companies Need to Go Public in 2024 with Ed Sim and Jamin Ball

Kevin Ryan · Apr 10, 2024

Plateauing is normal and expected, not a failure of execution — out of 100 startups a funnel of ever-smaller cohorts reach $10M, $50M, $100M, because not every market is a trillion dollars and not every product wins 30% share.

Market size and attainable share cap most companies regardless of how well they run.

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Harry Stebbings · Mar 28, 2026

Market size is the decisive variable, because the majority of companies plateau when the market turns out to be shallower and more crowded than expected

He has repeatedly seen companies hit $20-30M and stop as the market proves not to be what was assumed

Scope: framed as his own biggest lesson, offered for correction

18:34 20VC: The Venture Model is Broken | You Need to be Greedy and Selfish to Win Early Stage Investing | Why Margins Do Not Matter for Early-Stage Startups | The Growth Rate that is Required in a World of AI with Gili Raanan, Founder @ Cyberstarts

Gili Raanan · Mar 28, 2026

A company confined to a niche segment rather than a real market must reinvent itself into a much bigger product and market vision to sustain growth, and that is very hard

Noname went from $3M to $15M and then slowed because API security was a niche within application security, ending in a $500M sale to Akamai

19:02 20VC: The Venture Model is Broken | You Need to be Greedy and Selfish to Win Early Stage Investing | Why Margins Do Not Matter for Early-Stage Startups | The Growth Rate that is Required in a World of AI with Gili Raanan, Founder @ Cyberstarts

Gili Raanan · Mar 28, 2026

Once a company grows extremely fast year over year it becomes part of its DNA, and it will not slow down absent a significant external event

Companies growing that fast are doing something structurally right — product market fit, execution, timing — which doesn't simply disappear

14:44 Hypergrowth becomes company dna and persists

Gili Raanan · Mar 28, 2026

Great companies do not have to grow monotonically — they can stall completely for quarters — but whatever makes them capable of fast growth typically does not fade away

Sierra sold zero for two quarters, the founders diagnosed and fixed it, and then went from $2M to $12M and kept compounding

17:22 Stalls happen but the underlying growth capability does not fade

Mamoon Hamid · Oct 21, 2024

Breakout companies plateau because they stop innovating fast enough and shift into protecting their turf instead of disrupting themselves

Once they behave like big companies, someone else comes in, disrupts them and starts taking away their revenue

25:35 Stalling innovation to protect turf causes the plateau not market depth

Guillaume Moubeche · Dec 13, 2024

Growth is never truly exponential but an s-curve, and lempire hit a plateau because a large top of funnel masked wrong targeting and high churn in certain segments.

Small-team and founder buyers often see their own business fail or can't find customers, so they churn regardless of the product

25:20 Top of funnel volume masks wrong targeting and segment churn causing a plateau

Jason Lemkin · Nov 30, 2022

The real cause of company plateaus is failing to rebuild the management team in time, not the surface-level issues like TAM or second products

Founders stick with the 1.0 management team too long; the apparent root causes (not going upmarket, no second product, no TAM expansion) are all things great management teams figure out

31:51 Failure to rebuild the management team in time not tam or product limits causes plateaus

Deven Parekh · Oct 11, 2023

Whether a lower growth rate is acceptable can't be answered by a general rule — it depends on the business model and on what specifically caused the deceleration

People want one simple rule, but the answer depends on the business model and what is changing in the income statement; if it were easy, investors wouldn't be paid for it

25:00 Acceptability of slower growth depends on business model and specific cause not a general rule

Mati Staniszewski · Sep 8, 2025 · hedged

Revenue that grows very fast can also fall very fast, though ElevenLabs' own revenue is relatively sticky

55:23 Fast growth can reverse just as fast though stickiness varies

Jake Saper · Mar 10, 2025

An early breakout after investment indicates market pull but does not guarantee the company will win or endure

Zenefits was on an absolute tear with a monster founder while Gusto grew more slowly, yet Gusto endured and became massive

19:49 Early breakout signals pull but not eventual winner