Graduation Criteria

You’re ready to move to the Specialized stage once you’ve achieved roughly the following:

  1. Reproducible Pipeline - You can show a documented sales pipeline with clear stages and consistent conversion rates.
  2. Measurable Sales & Marketing - You track leads, conversions, CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), and can forecast short-term revenue with decent accuracy.
  3. Repeatable Onboarding Process - Customers are onboarded through a standard sequence, ensuring they reach key usage milestones correlated with retention.
  4. Defined Gross and Net Retention - You measure and understand your renewal and expansion rates, even if they’re not perfect yet.
  5. Clear SAM and TAM - You’ve identified your Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) and your Total Addressable Market (TAM), with a bottoms-up approach from your CRM.
  6. Burdened CAC Calculation - You have a handle on fully burdened CAC, inclusive of all S&M costs, so you know what it costs to acquire a customer.
  7. Logical Plan to $100M - You have a strategic plan (even if somewhat high-level) that outlines how you can achieve $100M in ARR over time.
  8. Functional Alignment - You’ve begun grouping customers by “type” or “segment” and assign them consistently to relevant teams, ensuring a smoother experience.

Predictable Quota Achievement - You have a reproducible quota plan where about 70–80% of reps consistently hit their OTE (On-Target Earnings).