Plan for the next S-curve before hitting plateau to maintain exponential-looking growth
Company growth is never truly exponential—it's a series of S-curves. Companies that appear to grow exponentially are actually chaining S-curves together by planning the next growth phase before the current one plateaus. Without this planning, you'll hit a wall and stall.
When to use
When you're experiencing rapid growth, before you hit a plateau. Start planning your next growth strategy when current momentum is still strong.
Don't do this
Riding one growth curve until it completely plateaus, then scrambling to find the next one while growth has stalled
6 Founders Who Did This
Hit plateau at $10M ARR after rapid growth from $1M to $10M in 18 months. Realized too late that he should have been planning next S-curve during the growth phase.
Post-Series A, chose to re-engineer Mutiny around large language models for 1:1 personalization rather than continuing existing trajectory. Made this bet while having traction, before AI tools became mainstream.
Built successive products: Now (deployment) → Vercel Platform (DX) → v0 (AI builder) → AI SDK, launching each before the previous plateaued
Pursued aggressive M&A strategy acquiring Mechanical Simulation (vehicle dynamics), Embark ($71M, trucking IP), EpiSci (defense AI), and Reblika, each opening new verticals or adding key IP
Expanded from SOC 2 to ISO 27001 and HIPAA before Series A, then to 35+ frameworks. Positioned as 'Trust Management Platform' beyond just compliance. Built Trust Center product and acquired Trustpage.
Systematically planned next S-curves: payments API → Connect for marketplaces → Atlas for incorporation → Radar for fraud → Capital for lending → Treasury for banking