Essay · 8 min read

Three more ways to build a $100 million business

Christoph Janz · The Angel VC blog, by Christoph Janz Free Intermediate

The direct follow up that models your exact case: roughly a hundred customers each paying a million or more (his brontosaurus), and even ten customers at ten million (the whale). Janz is honest that these need deep domain credibility and patience with long sales cycles. Read it to see both the shape of the business and the concentration risk baked into it.

  • A hundred customers at 1M each can be a nine figure company with almost no marketing engine.
  • The bigger the per customer value, the longer and more relationship heavy the sale.
  • Hunting the largest accounts usually needs years of industry expertise before you start.

The question it answers

  1. My total market looks small, but each customer is worth a lot. Can a low-count, high-value market still work?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
  3. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  4. The reference primer on the metrics and market-sizing logic investors use, including bottom-up market sizing that keeps... a16z Article · ~15 min read 16 Startup Metrics Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
  5. This is the classic mental model for exactly your question: how customer count trades off against deal size. Janz maps five... The Angel VC Essay · ~12 min read Five ways to build a $100 million business Christoph Janz
  6. A business built on a few big enterprise deals quietly builds a trap: if one account walks, your revenue caves. This piece... Lighter Capital Essay How SaaS Startups Can Minimize Customer Concentration Risk Lighter Capital
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →