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That animal metaphor thing about hitting $100M revenue

Original: Five Ways to Build a $100M Business

May 25, 2025
7 min read
Framework
Intermediate
Five ways to build a $100 million business

Summary

VC breakdown of five scalable paths to reach $100M in revenue, using animal metaphors.

Who This Is For

Founders
Product Managers
Growth Marketers

Key Takeaways

  • Learn the five distinct customer archetypes (elephants to flies) and their corresponding revenue models to reach $100M ARR
  • Understand the math behind customer acquisition: from 1,000 enterprise clients at $100k each to 10M users monetized at $10 each
  • Discover specific go-to-market strategies for each customer segment, from viral growth for consumers to inbound marketing for SMBs
  • Calculate realistic customer acquisition costs and lifetime values for different pricing tiers and business models
  • Identify which growth path aligns with your product and market based on ARPA and scalable acquisition channels

Tools & Technologies

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) calculations Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) analysis Net Promoter Score (NPS) measurement Inbound marketing platforms SEO and content marketing tools

Topics Covered

saas growth metrics revenue