What worked at $1M ARR will break you at $10M

What worked at $1M ARR will break you at $10M.

Startups thrive on an “all hands on deck” approach, where everyone does everything. It’s a survival mode that gets you through the early chaos.

But I recently worked with a company well beyond startup mode. They had dozens of post-sale people all stuck in overlapping roles, with many assuming someone else was accountable for things that weren’t happening.
The result? Surprise churn was creeping in, and expansion conversations were stalled.

The signs were obvious:

• Three people doing the same job, but differently.

• Resources begging leadership to hire help.

• Customers escalating to senior leadership because they were tired of waiting.

And yet, leadership was waiting for things to “calm down” before defining roles.
Well, things never calm down, and there is no ideal time to stop and reassess and restructure.

But the trust is that scaling requires craftsmen, not generalists. You need specialists who own outcomes, not a rotating cast of “whoever’s available.” Or worse yet, relying on the same superheroes and piling more and more on them.

Role clarity isn’t a luxury. It’s the bridge between survival and scale. And the longer you wait to build it, the more expensive the fix.