Five ways to build a $100 million business

Christoph Janz's now almost 10 year old article on how to think about "hunting flies vs elephants" in types of customers and techniques to sell to them.

To build a Web company with $100 million in annual revenues*, you essentially need:

• 1,000 enterprise customers paying you $100k+ per year each; or
• 10,000 medium-sized companies paying you $10k+ per year each; or
• 100,000 small businesses paying you $1k+ per year each; or
• 1 million consumers or "prosumers" paying you $100+ per year each (or, in the case of eCommerce businesses, 1M customers generating $100+ in contribution margin** per year each); or
• 10 million active consumers who you monetize at $10+ per year each by selling ads

Salespeople sometimes refer to "elephants", "deers" and "rabbits" when they talk about the first three categories of customers. To extend the metaphor to the 4th and 5th type of customer, let's call them "mice" and "flies". So how can you hunt 1,000 elephants, 10,000 deers, 100,000 rabbits, 1,000,000 mice or 10,000,000 flies? Let's take a look at it in reverse order.

Follow up Three more ways to build a $100M business – which adds Brontosaurus, Whale, and Microbes.

This is very much from the perspective of Venture Sized Business. But, the thought processes around who is your customer and what techniques do you use to sell to different scales of them is valuable for any business.