Research

Why growth stalls, where it stalls, and why most of the causes sit inside the business. The evidence behind Grow to Market, with every source listed.

Where growth stalls.

Notion Capital tracked venture-backed B2B software companies on the journey from their first dollar to $100M in revenue. Most never reach the goal they set out for. The biggest share stalls between $3M and $10M.1

$1M

20%

One in five never reaches its first $1M in annual recurring revenue.

$3M

40%

Most of these companies can’t move beyond founder-led sales.

$10M

60%

They stall between $3M and $10M without a working go-to-market model.

$30M

80%

They never build a repeatable go-to-market model.

S&P 500

1 in 10

53 of the 500 companies in the original 1957 index remain.

Bars show the share of companies that never get past each milestone. S&P 500 row: share of the original 1957 index still in it.5

Stalling is common. It is also largely within your control.

2 in 3

large companies experience a stall-out. Only about 1 in 7 fully recovers its previous growth momentum.

Bain & Company, Founder’s Mentality3

Bain & Company logo (placeholder)

87%

of growth stalls come from strategic and organisational choices, not external factors such as recession or regulation.

Olson, van Bever & Verry, Harvard Business Review4

Harvard Business Review logo (placeholder)

13%

of software companies reach $10M in annual recurring revenue within ten years of first revenue.

ChartMogul, 6,525 companies2

ChartMogul logo (placeholder)

What it means for your business.

Book a strategy call →How Grow to Market works

The plateau is predictable.Most companies slow between $1M and $10M. If growth has flattened, you are in a well-documented pattern, not an exception.

The causes are mostly internal.Strategy and organisational choices drive most stalls, so the fixes sit within your control.

Recovery is rare without a change of approach.Few companies regain their earlier momentum by doing more of the same. A working, repeatable go-to-market model is what separates the ones that do.

Sources

Notion Capital, “Start, Build, Scale: Three stages of the $1 to $100m revenue journey” (2023). Venture-backed B2B software companies.
ChartMogul, “Growth Levers: The Path from $1M to $20M ARR” (2025). Dataset of 6,525 software companies.
Bain & Company, “Founder’s Mentality: Barriers and pathways to sustainable growth”.
Matthew S. Olson, Derek van Bever and Seth Verry, “When Growth Stalls”, Harvard Business Review (March 2008).
Madison Trust, S&P 500 timeline. 53 of the 500 companies in the original 1957 index remain.

Sources 1 and 2 describe software companies. Sources 3 and 4 cover large companies across sectors. We use them to describe a common pattern, not to predict the results of any individual business.

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