Build a 10x Revenue Plan

Entrepreneurs love talking about how they’re going to build the next unicorn startup (billion dollar valuation) or how they’re on a quest to hit $1 million in revenue to join Entrepreneurs’ Organization. While having big goals is important, it’s also important to map out how you’re going to get there. A good, simple exercise is to build a 10x revenue plan. The idea is to build out a one page document that outlines how you’ll make the business 10x larger. Most planning and budgeting is time-oriented (e.g. a one or three year plan). The 10x revenue plan isn’t designed to be a large, complicated financial model, rather the goal is to paint a picture of what’s needed to become 10x larger than now.

Here are a few bullet points to include in the 10x revenue plan:

• Current revenue and 10x revenue
• Current staffing and staffing needed to be 10x larger (most likely not 10x the people)
• Timeframe (often depends on size and scale of the startup currently)
• Fundamental changes required (e.g. big rocks or milestones)
• Key assumptions (things that will happen in the market, competitor changes, etc)
• Financing needed, if any

So, grab your co-founders and build a 10x revenue plan over lunch. Just putting the ideas down into a Google Doc does wonders for aligning team members and painting a picture of what’s required.

What else? What are some other thoughts on building a 10x revenue plan?