Chapter 3 The Climb: How to Get to $10 Million By Tien Tzuo In the preceding chapter, Jason Lemkin provides us insights into what it takes to build a successful and sustainable SaaS business. There are no overnight successes, and even the most vital of solutions take years to prove out — with a viable business model and strong annual recurring profits. In this chapter, Tien metaphorically takes us on the climb from initial revenue to $10 million ARR. Tien neatly dissects the journey into three key phases — proving the idea, proving the product, and finally, proving the market. You could’ve gotten a nice, comfortable job at a nice, comfortable organization, but instead, you decided to take some risks and start your own company. You decided to dream big. So, how do you build the next Salesforce? How do you create the next billion-dollar success story? You have to start somewhere. Lots of people think that success is a linear path. When they look at success, they look at the end result, jumping to the outcome and skipping over the boring, hard stuff that must have happened along the way. But the path to success isn’t straight. Success is achieved through a series of twists and turns, through a series of challenges that must have been solved, not through one brilliant move. I like to say that building a business is a lot like climbing a mountain. Now, unlike those two crazy guys that free-climbed El Capitan, most of us don’t scramble straight up 3,000 feet of granite when we go up a mountain. Instead, we make our way along a route that has lots of switchbacks. I like the metaphor of a switchback, because at each turn you’re doing an about-face. You’re completely switching directions. Similarly, when a company enters a new phase, it practically becomes a new organization.