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Why we picked it This is the classic mental model for exactly your question: how customer count trades off against deal size. Janz maps five viable paths to $100M in revenue, from 1,000 enterprise customers paying $100k+ each (elephants) down to 10 million ad-monetized users (flies), so you can see where a low-count, high-value market sits and what it demands of you. Treat it as a lens for pressure-testing your own model, not a promise that any single path is right for you.
Five ways to build a $100 million business
From The Angel VC by Christoph Janz ~12 min read
- There are several ways to reach $100M in revenue, and fewer, higher-value customers (elephants and deer) is a legitimate one, not a compromise.
- Each path demands very different skills: elephant hunting needs real enterprise sales muscle, while the mouse and fly paths need virality and marketing.
- The right question is not just how big your market is, but whether your acquisition channels are scalable and profitable for the segment you are chasing.
