Unlocking 10x Growth

Founders often react to a plateau by adding more: more ads, more channels, more content.

That’s the worst possible move. When the curve flattens, you don’t need to move faster, you need to see clearer.

I call this the Plateau Diagnostic, four questions that reveal where growth is leaking.

The Plateau Diagnostic

1. ICP drift: Are you selling to customers who love the demo but never renew? If yes, you’re chasing volume, not value.

2. Channel saturation: Are you spending more to get the same results? Time to pivot to precision, ABM, partner-led, or community.

3. Pricing misalignment: Are you giving away too much value at the wrong tier? Realign price with outcome, not effort.

4. Operational ceiling: Are you relying on heroics? If execution depends on 1–2 people, you’ve hit your scale limit.

Run these diagnostics quarterly, you’ll spot flattening curves before they turn into walls.

Field Note: Building a £6M Pipeline in 1 year

I worked with a growth AI company (~$2 M ARR) that looked healthy on paper. Great product, active pipeline, solid team. But growth had stalled.

They had a bottom up acquisition approach, engaging a very technical user, and that worked great for them up to that point. They had saturated all the channels and technical buyers in their networks. 

The opportunity was now to shift to top down acquisition and unlock bigger budget than a POC, across Europe, navigating slow and bureaucratic procurement systems. 

We made three moves:

• Repositioned their product to C-suite decision makers, and build sales enablement assets

• Shifted acquisition from bottom-up to tow-down (C-suite) channels 

• Established them as category leaders amongst Enterprise Customers and Investors

In 1 year we: grew their enterprise share of wallet across Europe, built a $6M pipeline, drove engagement with the C-suite of the biggest e-commerce and luxury brands.

Mindset: Treat the plateau as data

The best founders don’t panic at the slowdown, they study it. They treat the plateau like telemetry.

Because every flat curve tells you exactly what to fix next:

• If acquisition is steady but revenue isn’t → refine ICP or pricing.

• If retention’s solid but pipeline slows → diversify channels.

• If everything’s solid but growth feels fragile → automate operations.

Momentum comes back the moment clarity does.

From plateau to inflection

As Schultz often points out, the curve flattens when the next growth loop hasn’t been built yet. Your job as a founder isn’t to push harder, it’s to build that next loop before you need it.

That’s how you turn a plateau into an inflection point.

Coming next : “SCALE: Turning Growth into a System”

Once your model works, growth becomes an infrastructure challenge, not a marketing one. We’ll cover how to design the Human + AI operating system that compounds, automation, partnerships, and data-driven expansion.

If you’re an AI founder scaling past $2 M ARR and want structured growth thinking, let’s talk.