Article · 12 min read

Your startup idea probably isn't venture-scale

Lenny Rachitsky · Lenny's Newsletter Freemium Intermediate

This is the honest, uncomfortable side of the answer: sometimes the doubters are right and the idea simply cannot reach venture scale. It lays out how to check whether there is a believable path to a very large business, and quotes investors who note that some big markets are bad and some small ones can be expanded. Read it to sit with the hard ceiling case before you talk yourself into a beachhead that leads nowhere.

• Venture scale usually means a real path to roughly 100 million dollars in revenue
• A large market can still be a bad one, and a small one can sometimes be expanded
• Be honest about whether a believable path to big actually exists