I Stole This From a Billion Dollar Startup

Read Time: 3 Minutes

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90% of startups die.

0.07% of them become “unicorns” ($1B+ valuation)

Before Simply Scale, I worked at 4 them:

• Vercel ($9.3B valuation)
• HealthEquity ($8.9B valuation)
• Divvy (Acquired by Bill for $2.5B in 2021)
• Podium ($3.1B valuation)

Different markets. Different models.

Same operating principles.

If you want to scale past the messy middle, copy these

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Principle #1: Control

They control the inputs.

They decide what gets tracked.
Where it gets tracked.
And how it gets labeled.

Every lead enters through a known door.
Form, landing page, referral, event.

Every lead gets a specific source.
Not “website.”
Not “inbound.”

Exact.

Every source ties back to a budget line.
And a specific campaign.

So they can answer, fast:

What are we buying.
What is it producing.
What should we cut.
What should we double down on.

No lead left untagged.
No spend left unaccounted for.
No channel that “kind of works.”

Marketing isn’t gambling, it’s a formula.

We spend X on this channel.
This campaign produces Y pipeline.

If you can’t control the inputs, you can’t control the outcome.

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Principle #2: Visibility

They don’t run the business from 25 tabs.

They don’t bounce between Meta, Google, LinkedIn, a spreadsheet, and then Salesforce just to answer basic questions.

They build a single view of the business.

One place to see:

How many leads came in
Where they came from
Who owns them
What happened next
How much pipeline they created

Visibility is not more reports.

Visibility is fewer places where truth can hide.

Because the when you have 25 systems, you get 25 versions of reality.

And then your team starts doing the worst kind of work…

Screenshotting dashboards…
Exporting CSVs…
Reconciling numbers in meetings…
Arguing about what is “right”…

If you need a weekly meeting to reconcile metrics, that is not alignment.

That is your process showing it’s broken.

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Principle #3: Trust in Data

They don’t waste time arguing over numbers.

They assume the numbers are right.
So they can spend their time on strategy.

They build the company on trust.

It comes from discipline like:

One source of truth
One definition for each core metric
Fields that can’t be skipped when they matter
Automation that fills in what humans always forget
Guardrails that stop bad data at the door

When that is in place, meetings change.

Less “Why are your numbers different than mine?”
More “What are we doing next?”

If your team says “Salesforce is wrong” more than once a week, you’re not managing a funnel.

You’re managing opinions.

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Principle #4: Scalability

They don’t rebuild internal processes every month.

They build a foundation that can take a punch.

Then they adjust on top of it.

The foundation looks like this:

One consistent lead intake path
Routing rules that work every time
Stages that mean the same thing to everyone
Clear ownership at every step
A handoff that does not rely on memory

Because scale doesn’t break good processes.

It exposes bad ones.

If your process only works when one specific person is online, it is not a process.

It is a person.

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Principle #5: Respect People’s Time

They treat time like cash.

They protect it.

They don’t pay expensive people to do cheap work.

They don’t have reps doing data entry.
They don’t have Ops routing leads by hand.
They don’t have marketing living in spreadsheets just to answer basic questions.

Humans do judgment.

Systems do the repeatable stuff.

Routing.
Cleaning.
Logging.
Notifying.
Creating the task.
Assigning the owner.

If a 200k salary leader is copy pasting leads… you are burning money.

Not because they are bad.

Because your system is missing.

That is it.

Pick one principle you are failing today.
Fix that first.

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2 Ways I Can Help You:

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