Interviewing Mary D’Onofrio from Bessemer Ventures at Traction Conf

Everyone knows what a unicorn is. But what is a centaur, and how do you scale a startup from $0 to $100 million in annual recurring revenue?

I had the pleasure of interviewing Mary D’Onofrio from Bessemer Ventures at the recent Traction Conference in Vancouver, and now the full video is online:

What we talked about, in brief:

10 Rules to Grow Operationally Efficient Businesses and Scale to $100 Million ARR

  • We know what unicorns are. What is a centaur? Why does it matter? Why is it important?
  • How do you get there?
  • How do you fail? Common factors of companies that don’t make it?
  • What is growth endurance?
  • As you get bigger, margins go down and time to CAC payback goes up. Why?
  • What does cash conversion score tell you about a company?
  • You’ve done a ton of work on benchmarks … if you want to be a $100M ARR startup, what marks do you need to hit for:
    • ARR growth ratio
    • Retention (net and gross)
    • Margin
    • S&M as a percentage of revenue
  • Top 3 tips for founders to grow operationally efficient businesses TODAY