Milestone map
Milestone map
3 milestones
Reach $25K MRR — financial evidence and team structure
12–30 weeks from $10K MRR
Reach $25,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue — the first quarter-point on the path to $100K. At this scale, two things must be in place that were optional at $10K: a team structure (even if tiny — one co-founder, one contractor, one part-time hire) and a clear understanding of which revenue comes from which customer segment. $25K MRR with a single channel and no team is extremely fragile; the evidence at this milestone should show that you have already started building redundancy.
Proof required
Share a payment processor screenshot showing $25K+ in monthly recurring revenue. Write one paragraph on your current customer segments: how many segments, what each pays (average contract value), and which segment represents the highest concentration risk. Name one person (co-founder, contractor, or hire) who is not you and who is responsible for a defined part of the business.
What gets checked
- $25K+ MRR in a payment processor screenshot.
- Customer segment breakdown identifies the single largest concentration risk — the segment or customer whose loss would hurt most.
- One named non-founder responsible for a defined business function — not 'we have contractors' but 'Alice handles all customer onboarding'.
Common mistakes
- Treating $25K MRR as simply 'more of the same' — the inflection point to $100K requires building team and channel redundancy, not just more volume of what worked before.
- No team member named — a solo founder at $25K MRR is a bottleneck waiting to break.
- Segment analysis absent — 'we serve SMBs' is not a segment analysis; a specific ACV and customer type is.
Resources
Foundationstart here
Depthgo deeper
What a verifier looks for
- The screenshot must be from a payment processor — confirm the platform name.
- Ask: 'What percentage of your MRR comes from your largest single customer?' — high concentration is a risk worth surfacing.
- The team member named should have a defined responsibility, not just exist — 'we have a part-time developer' is not defined responsibility.
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Reach $50K MRR — name the primary growth channel and its limit
12–26 weeks from $25K MRR
Reach $50,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue. The key question at $50K MRR is channel dependency: almost every business at this stage has one channel doing most of the work. The risk is that the channel saturates or breaks, and there is nothing behind it. This milestone asks you to name that channel explicitly and identify where it will stop scaling — because the insight about the channel's ceiling is what will drive the next phase of growth.
Proof required
Share a payment processor screenshot showing $50K+ in monthly recurring revenue. Write 150 words on your primary growth channel: what it is, what percentage of new MRR it has generated over the last 3 months, and at what point you expect it to stop scaling (and why). Name one secondary channel you have tested and what the results were.
What gets checked
- $50K+ MRR in a payment processor screenshot.
- Primary channel is named specifically — not 'word of mouth' but 'referrals from existing enterprise customers, averaging 2 new logos per month through the direct referral programme'.
- Channel ceiling is estimated with a specific reason — 'word of mouth will plateau when our current customers run out of adjacent peers to refer' is specific; 'eventually it will slow down' is not.
Common mistakes
- Channel description is generic — 'inbound' with no specifics about what generates the inbound or why it works.
- No secondary channel named — at $50K MRR with no secondary channel in testing, you have a brittle business.
- Channel ceiling estimated as 'we don't know yet' — the constraint may be unknown precisely, but there should be a working hypothesis.
Resources
Foundationstart here
Depthgo deeper
What a verifier looks for
- The primary growth channel must be specific — 'word of mouth' is not a channel; 'referrals from direct outreach to existing customers' is.
- The channel ceiling estimate should be testable — ask 'how would you know when this channel is starting to saturate?'
- The secondary channel test result must be honest: 'we tried cold email and got a 0.2% reply rate over 6 weeks, so we deprioritised it' is more credible than a secondary channel test with no results described.
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Reach $100K MRR — describe the business model at this scale
12–26 weeks from $50K MRR
Reach $100,000 in Monthly Recurring Revenue — approximately $1.2M ARR. At this milestone the final evidence requirement is a business model summary that reflects the business as it actually works, not as it was originally conceived. The plan written at $0 is almost always different from the model that actually produces $100K MRR. Articulating the difference is the most honest and most useful proof of what was actually learned.
Proof required
Share a payment processor screenshot showing $100K+ in monthly recurring revenue. Write 250 words on: (1) what your customer, problem, and solution actually are at $100K MRR — not what you originally planned, but what is actually working; (2) the single biggest difference between the business you imagined when you started and the business you actually built; (3) your current net revenue retention rate (NRR) or churn rate.
What gets checked
- $100K+ MRR in a payment processor screenshot.
- The business model description reflects current reality, not original plan — there should be at least one specific difference named.
- NRR or churn rate is stated — this is the single most important indicator of whether the business is sustainable at $100K MRR.
Common mistakes
- Business model description matches the original pitch deck verbatim — either the business never evolved (unusual at $100K MRR) or the reflection is not honest.
- NRR or churn absent — 'we're growing fast' does not substitute for a retention number.
- The 'biggest difference' named is trivial — 'we changed our pricing model slightly' versus 'we completely pivoted from B2C to B2B 8 months in'.
Resources
Foundationstart here
Depthgo deeper
What a verifier looks for
- The NRR or churn rate must be specific — 'low churn' is not verifiable; '4% monthly churn' is.
- The biggest difference between planned and actual business should be meaningful — probe: 'What is the most important thing you got wrong in your original assumption about the customer?'
- Compare the $25K, $50K, and $100K screenshots for consistency — the growth story across all three milestones should be coherent.
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