In this newsletter, I go through a practical framework to help you map your next investment, align teams, and unlock new TAM with precision.

When it comes to driving revenue, I often get asked what the right next investment should be to extend runway and accelerate growth. I’ve developed the Enterprise Growth Framework below to help answer this when scaling enterprise tech businesses.

The Enterprise Growth Framework provides a roadmap used by early-stage enterprise-focused startups, SMB or mid-market players going upmarket, as well as $1B+ public companies entering new verticals.

Rather than guessing, this model helps you map go-to-market (GTM) channels, team structures, and capital decisions to the slice of Total Addressable Market (TAM) you’re about to unlock. Companies that take this deliberate approach are the ones that build sustainable, enduring businesses.

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The Axes

Expansion of Addressable Market (X-Axis): Growth is primarily a volume game. The more of your market you can serve, the more you can grow. The X-axis reflects how product capabilities increase the percentage of TAM you can realistically go after, and should drive the bulk of your product roadmap.

For instance, a $1B market might start with only 10% serviceable, but as the product matures through features, integrations, and use cases, that number increases.

Resource Commitment (Y-Axis): As you move up the Y-axis, you increase the level and scope of investment needed to unlock each new slice of TAM. In early stages, enterprise businesses typically need significant upfront spending in R&D, go-to-market hires, and infrastructure.

As product-market fit improves and revenue scales, investments shift to more targeted bets, like new features, operational tooling, or specific customer wins. Over time, investment becomes more precise, aimed at expansion and renewal rather than foundational buildout.

Unlike SMB or B2C models, enterprise growth demands longer sales cycles, complex product requirements, and layered decision-making, often leading to worse unit economics in the early years.

But over time, as scale and maturity set in and business gains market share, winning new logos becomes easier, customer expansion accelerates, and unit economics improve, providing long term sustainable growth, and many times with far better unit economics than an SMB focused business. At this stage, the focus shifts to process and execution, tightening feedback loops, investing in systems to support your largest customers, and unlocking new markets.

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Go-To-Market Channels (Top Row)

GTM channels evolve as product and brand maturity grow. On the far left, early-stage companies lean on referrals, proof-of-concepts, and discounted deals to get in the door. As credibility builds, partnerships and joint selling gain traction. This evolves into direct sales, then customer expansion. At the far right sits inbound, often the result of years of brand equity, satisfied customers, and market presence.

The key is to layer these channels deliberately. In early stages, focus on no more than two; going deep over broad keeps execution tight and CAC manageable. Spreading too thin too early reduces your effectiveness.

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Team Evolution (Middle Bands)

Org structure must evolve with both TAM and investment. The model outlines four distinct stages of team evolution:

1. Lean, Sales-Led Teams In the earliest phase, you’re running lean. Think founder-led sales, a compact engineering squad, and maybe a single AE. These are generalist-heavy, all-hands environments.

2. Customer Segment–Led Teams As revenue grows, so does customer segmentation. Teams start to map to specific use cases, contract sizes, or verticals. This could be a new pod structure within an existing company going upmarket, or an early specialization move focused on reducing churn and driving usage.

3. Product Line–Centric Teams Here, scale allows for full product-line teams, dedicated PMs, engineers, marketers, sales, and CS mapped to each product line. In larger orgs, these groups may own their own P&Ls, with multiple product lines within a specific market or customer segment.

4. Vertical/Industry-Focused Teams At this stage, as growth starts to level off, it’s time to identify new bets and begin the cycle again. This often means splitting the team into two. Spinning up a lean, sales-led team to enter new markets (point 1 above), while the existing team continues to go deeper into established verticals and segments.

These mature teams include deep domain AEs, solutions architects, solutions engineers, onboarding specialists, customer success managers, professional services, and other specialized roles focused on expanding existing accounts and driving renewals.

As a business grows and scales, a key factor in how you organize your teams must be based on shifting from one-off unique initiatives to a more structured and repeatable way of execution. This will happen naturally as the product matures, customer needs and challenges start to get categorized, and your teams get enough reps to learn and find efficiencies.

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Applying the Model

First, use the model to assess alignment across all four dimensions as you do the invisible before deciding where to commit and how to sequence your investments.

For example, if you’re moving upmarket and are investing in new product capabilities to win enterprise (bottom left on the chart), does your team structure reflect that? Are you operating in a sales-led or customer segment–led motion?

Or are you still structured like your core business, perhaps spread too thin across product lines when you need to hunker down on one?

Or, if you’ve already captured over 80% of your total market and heavy investment isn’t necessary, do your GTM efforts prioritize a direct sales motion alongside expansions and renewals, or are you still relying on channels meant for earlier stages, such as mainly referrals?

As you think about making your next investment, it’s important to do so in a sequenced and disciplined manner.  It’s a mechanism to unlock the next phase of TAM, so be intentional about what kinds of roles it would unlock, how you would structure your teams to maximize your runway, and which parts of the product you should invest in to maximize your win rates.

The Enterprise Growth Acceleration Model is your compass. Align your channels, capital, and org structure to the market you’re unlocking now, and be ready to evolve again when it works.

That’s how leaders built the enterprise flywheel and keep climbing the curve.