T2D3 Software Update: Embracing the Founder to CEO (F2C) Journey –
Summary
It’s been four years since TechCrunch published my blog post The SaaS Adventure, which introduced the concept of a “T2D3” roadmap to help SaaS companies scale — and, as an aside, explored how well my mom understood my job as an “adventure capitalist.” The piece detailed seven distinct stages that enterprise cloud startups must navigate to achieve $100 million in annualized revenue. I was blown away by the response to the piece and gratified that so many founders and investors found the T2D3 framework helpful. Perhaps the most notable change in the last four years is that the number of playbooks for companies to follow as they sell software has expanded. Today, more companies are embracing product-led growth and a less-formal, bottoms-up model — employees are swiping credit cards to buy a product, and not necessarily interacting with a human salesperson. This journey can take many paths, but ideally it starts with the traditional hustle to find early product/market fit.