Fast-growing companies operate with internal chaos ("backstage") as they constantly rebuild systems. The key is to shield customers from this dysfunction, presenting a polished, reliable product experience ("onstage") no matter how turbulent things are internally.
At $40M ARR, optimize for differentiation. At $100M, shift focus to scalability and crossing the chasm to the mass market. When approaching $200M, the CPO must become a business leader, driving new product lines and revenue streams.
When scaling rapidly, companies naturally develop departmental silos and a tendency towards small, incremental improvements. These two forces actively work against the bold, cross-functional bets required to reach the next revenue milestone and must be actively fought.
AI tools democratize prototyping, but their true power is in rapidly exploring multiple ideas (divergence) and then testing and refining them (convergence). This dramatically accelerates the creative and validation process before significant engineering resources are committed.
Scaling past $200M requires a CPO to think in terms of new revenue streams, business models, and financial growth levers like attach rates. They must partner with finance to model and drive business outcomes, not just ship product features.
Balance your roadmap investments: Horizon 1 drives revenue from core offerings. Horizon 2 incubates new bets to find the next $10M product line. Horizon 3 lays the foundation for future growth by exploring cutting-edge technology and long-term bets.
As companies scale, roadmaps become a list of stakeholder commitments. To maintain focus, leaders must relentlessly communicate the "why" behind every initiative and tie it to a clear investment ROI. This ensures all teams are running in the same direction, not just checking boxes.
Being a vendor just solves today's problems. To become a true strategic partner, you must understand a customer's long-term business goals and explicitly connect your product roadmap to their future success. This is critical for enterprise retention and moving up-market.
Once product-market fit is achieved, the singular obsession must be retention. Before focusing on expansion metrics like NRR or efficient acquisition (CAC), you must first prove you can stop the "leaky bucket" and keep the customers you've already won.
At the $100M ARR mark, complexity rises. "Slowing down" means intentionally focusing on quality and planning to prevent rework and tech debt. This allows teams to ship faster in the long run, like taking a shorter, well-planned hiking trail instead of running a longer one.