Chapter 3 The Climb: How to Get to $10 Million Prove the Product ($1 Million to $3 Million) After your first million you can say to yourself, “Okay people like the idea. They’ll pay for it.” But what were they really paying for? In the previous phase, you were probably testing a whole range of ideas, seeing which of the ideas will actually stick. But now it’s time to change course. Now, it’s time to focus and do some editing. What is the product you really need to build? While proving the idea, you may have tested all sorts of different ideas, but now it’s time to cull, to prioritize, and to think through what you have to build first, and what can be pushed out to later years. The reverse can also be true. At Zuora, we thought a simple billing system was sufficient. Then, we realized our customers needed a lot more — we had to add APIs, payment systems, e-commerce platforms, tax engines, and so on. We realized during this phase that we needed a very broad product. Now, proving the product doesn’t mean you have to have the entire thing finished, but you should have enough of an understanding to be able to win in the marketplace, and lay out a coherent product roadmap that will drive your engineering efforts for quarters or years to come. That’s really the learning phase, and you want to have all that discovery done by the time you approach the $3 million market and begin the next phase. Because by that point, you won’t have time to dramatically re- engineer your product — you’ll be looking to scale. Prove the Market ($3 Million to $10 Million) The scale up from $3 million to $10 million is very exciting. If you’ve done a good job proving the idea, and now have a solid roadmap that resonates with customers, then you’re likely trying to do the $3 million to $10 million run as fast as possible. At this stage, you’re hiring a bunch of salespeople, spending significant budget on marketing, and your engineers are focused on executing the roadmap. Some companies do the $3 million to $10 million run in a year (or less). But as you go through this process, you also need to define your market. Ask yourself: Is your chosen market truly a multibillion-dollar market? Is it a $500 million market? Is it a $100 million market? When you start raising