Charles HudsonFounder and Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures

Is chasing 10x growth the real startup killer?

14 Nov 2025 · 1 min

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Charles Hudson critiques the cultural pressure for startups to hit extreme, rapid growth (e.g., 10 million ARR immediately). He recounts an anecdote about a founder (Roy) who admitted over-emphasizing launch revenue and attracting transient attention, and urges founders not to chase hyped growth examples but focus on sustainable practices.

Chapters

You have to go to 10 million in ARR in two hours or your company sucks. That's just not normal. And we, we don't talk enough about what happens on the other side of these stories. And I think it takes a lot of courage to say what Roy said and to admit the truth, which was like, hey, I made, I made a miscalculation. We did a great job on launch marketing. We shouldn't have talked about revenue and that the energy and attention we attracted at launch. The answer is it didn't persist. And so I feel like lately I've been trying to spend more of my time encouraging startups to not chase whatever thing it that they read on X or heard about. This company. Did this.