How to Architect 100M€ B2B Software Business?
In early February, I shared that I was starting the Revenue Architecture course by Winning by Design. Now that I’ve completed it, I want to share some key insights — along with reflections from my own 10+ year career in tech sales and the growth stories I’ve had the privilege to be part of.
This course gave me a whole new perspective on how to scale a recurring revenue business — and why many companies stall at certain breakpoints. If you're trying to scale from 1M€ to 10M€ to 100M€ ARR, the lessons here could make a big difference.
I hope you enjoy these insights.
Why Recurring Impact is the Foundation of Growth
Scaling a SaaS business is not just about building a beautiful product or reckless spending of VC money — it’s about creating a system that generates predictable results, also known as a Revenue Factory.
The course highlighted a key principle:
Recurring revenue is the result of recurring impact.
Customer Acquisition gets you in the door
Customer Retention makes your revenue predictable
Customer Expansion compounds your growth
At Salesforce (2015–2022), I saw how powerful this model can be. It was all about building trust and delivering customer success (impact!). Once we nailed the customer acquisition and onboarding, the recurring revenue engine really ignited.
I was fortunate to be part of the Salesforce Finland journey from €10M to €100M ARR closing over 100 new business and expansion deals, and working with some of the best people in the industry. Globally this software-as-a-service industry pioneer just closed their first ever 10B$ ARR quarter in Q4/FY25 powered by Agentforce.
Similarly, one of my customers, Qt Company built a strong consumption-based revenue model and global high-touch GTM motion, which became a powerful growth engine as existing enterprise customers expanded their use of the Qt platform beyond €100M ARR. These two experiences allow me to to understand how the land and expand strategy works in practice.
However, as more companies adopted the recurring revenue (Saas) business model, its effects waned. We've matured beyond the basics, customers expect more, and now new strategies are needed to maintain competitive edge.
How Ideal Tech Startup Growth Looks Like
This is how the growth journey from Startup to 100M€ and IPO could look like, and 12 focus areas you should pay attention to.
Growth typically follows an S-curve, but there are a series of breakpoints where companies face challenges in revenue growth, with each breakpoint having about a 50% success rate, impacting the overall growth trajectory.
Pricing and Packaging
Founder-Led Growth
Data-driven decision making
Establish GTM Motions
Repeatable Processes
Unit Economics
Growth Velocity
Sustainable Growth
Productivity
Interoperability
Durability
Profitability (=Revenue Factory).
Sounds easy? It's not.
You need to build the foundations right from the start.
Recurring revenue is a sophisticated engine that is highly sensitive to marginal gains due to the mathematical nature of compounding effects. These effects influence acquisition, retention, and expansion in different ways.
Most executives are not even aware of this.
GTM Plays a Vital Role
Since 2022, I have coached several CEOs & Founders across the world in four Startup Accelerators: Newchip, KIUAS, KX Techbite, and Hanken Business Lab. It’s always exciting to innovate with the product, but the biggest problems are usually within marketing, sales, pricing & packaging.
As companies evolve, the importance of the GTM Approach increases significantly, forcing organisations to adapt. Typically, it takes around 18 months to fully adjust to such a significant change, known as a phase shift.
Most organisations just react to these shifts rather than prepare for them in advance.
You Need to Build a Revenue Factory
The concept of a Revenue Factory serves as a vessel to help companies transition from "growth at all cost" strategy to a more sustainable approach, providing them with a tangible example of what to aim for.
Revenue Factory is an implementation of Revenue Architecture. It integrates six essential models:
Revenue Model: Defines what the factory produces, such as MRR or ARR in SaaS, and may include additional components like on-premise elements in some cases.
Data Model: Utilises the Data Model (Bowtie) to measure performance against benchmarks, ensuring the right processes, technologies, and skills are employed.
Mathematical Model: Applies the growth formula to analyse revenue patterns, moving beyond Unit Economics to understand market impacts and scenarios.
Operating Model: Provides a structured approach to managing increasing GTM motions and revenue production lines, avoiding operational chaos.
Growth Model: Maps revenue growth through an S-curve with four phases, each demanding specific operational approaches.
GTM Model: Select the most effective GTM strategies to drive scalability and cost efficiency in bringing products to market.
So the Revenue Architecture aligns all revenue functions — such as marketing, sales, customer success, and finance — into one efficient system that creates recurring impact.
It's not rocket science, but it's in fact the best scientific framework available for Saas today.
Companies like Adobe, Calendly, Dropbox, Asana, and Meltwater (actually 1 out of every 4 public SaaS firms) are using these frameworks to design and optimise their GTM and scaling their business with Winning by Design.
Each of these models could have their own blog post, but I’ll share few highlights to help you understand the most essential message.
Align Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Finance Under One Operating Model
The more you research recurring revenue business, the better you understand that great companies avoid silos, and have a shared vision about the future. Revenue growth is not a sales-only problem. Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and Finance need to work together under a single framework to maximise impact.
Three Decisions that help you align and scale
1) Establish the Bowtie Model
At the heart of recurring revenue is the concept that it stems from ongoing impact, which lies beyond the classic marketing and sales funnel. In fact, the journey of recurring revenue starts where the classic funnel ends.
The standardised Data Model we've adopted extends this funnel into a Bowtie shape, integrating post-commitment activities. This model is bifurcated: the left side targets customer acquisition, while the right side focuses on nurturing long-term customer relationships.
To create the Data Model, we overlay a standardised Data Structure that utilises three metrics: Volume Metrics (VM), Conversion Metrics (CR), and Time Metrics (t). This forms a Data Structure (The Bowtie Metrics) that is layered on top of the Data Model (The Bowtie).
2) Leverage SPICED
SPICED is a sales framework designed to help you diagnose your prospects’ needs more effectively — similar to how a doctor identifies the root cause of a patient’s issue rather than just treating symptoms.
Situation. Facts, circumstances, and background details about your prospect
Pain. The challenges that brought the prospect your way
Impact. How you impact your prospect’s business
Critical Event. Deadline to achieve that impact
Decision. The process, committee, and criteria involved in purchasing a solution
SPICED helps all customer facing teams align and sharpen focus on the recurring impact rather than product features.
3) Select the Right GTM Motion
Applying different GTM motions offers clear advantages, enabling a company to reach various market segments. However, managing many different GTM motions simultaneously requires a diverse set of resources.
Each GTM Motion requires a distinct marketing approach, sales team, and customer success strategy. This diversification can stretch a company's resources too thin, making it impractical to implement early in the growth phase. You need to pick your battles.
The ability to adapt the GTM strategy each year separates the best high-growth companies from average ones. What works at 10M€ ARR won't work at 100M€ ARR. As the company and market environment changes, so does the need for new people, incentives, teams, tech, and management structures.
The role of the CEO & Founder is crucial in owning, building, and promoting company wide performance systems like Revenue Factory.
My Key Takeaways for Building a €100M ARR Software Business
Product-market fit will get you to €10M ARR — GTM fit will get you to €100M
Growth isn’t just about acquisition — it’s about customer retention and expansion too
All revenue functions need to align under a single operating model and focus on impact
Anticipate phase shifts, breakpoints, and aligning teams around the right GTM model
After CEO has created company wide clarity, everyone executes with more confidence
Thank you for reading!
Do you agree? What did I miss?
➢ Add your comments below, and share this post with your growth minded friends.
I’m excited to share that starting 3/2025,
I’m officially a Winning by Design Ambassador.
In 2025, I aim to work with 2-5 growth companies that want to accelerate B2B software company growth from 1M€ to 10M€ to 100M€ with GTM strategy, technology, and execution.
Interested in exploring opportunities to work together?
