From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue

by Aaron Ross, Jason Lemkin

Impossible Goals , Inevitable Successes Why are you struggling to grow your business when everyone else seems to be crushing their goals? If you needed to triple revenue within the next three years, would you know exactly how to do it? Doubling the size of your business, tripling it, even growing ten times larger isn’t about magic. It’s not about privileges, luck, or working harder. There’s a template that the world’s fastest growing companies follow to achieve and sustain much, much faster growth. From Impossible to Inevitable details the hypergrowth playbook of companies like the record-breaking Zenefits (which skyrocketed from $1 million to $100 million in two years), Salesforce.com (the fastest growing multibillion dollar software company), and EchoSign—aka Adobe Document Services—(which catapulted from $0 to $144 million in seven years). Whether you have a $1 billion or a $100,000 business, you can use the same insights as these notable companies to learn what it really takes to break your own revenue records. For instance, one of the authors shows how he grew his income from $67,000 to $720,000 in four years while maintaining a 20-30 hour work week and welcoming a new child—nine times. This book shows you how to surpass plateaus and get off of the up-and-down revenue rollercoaster by answering three questions about growing revenue to tens times its This powerful, effective book provides a template for you to kick off your biggest growth spurt yet. This template includes The 7 Ingredients Of The authors take each ingredient and break it down into specific steps to guide you through implementation. From Impossible to Inevitable helps you take impossible goals and turn them into inevitable successes for your business and team . You will achieve success even bigger than you can imagine from where you’re sitting today.

Genres: Business, Entrepreneurship, Nonfiction, Management, Leadership, Buisness, Technology

320 pages, Hardcover

First published February 8, 2016

Reviews

[Jim Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether it's because of my current business challenges or just because it's a great book, I found the content in From Impossible to be extremely valuable. I highlighted parts of 110 pages (292 page book) and crashed Evernote twice while capturing all of my notes.

While there are seven "parts" to the book, I feel like each one could stand alone as it's own book -- there is that much information packed into each.

Biggest takeaways:
- How to know if you've nailed a niche
- Are you a nice-to-have?
- Corporate marketing vs demand generation
- The 15/85 rule: early adopters and mainstream buyers
- How make sales scalable (this alone could be Predictable Revenue 2.0)

I highly recommend this book for any entrepreneur, CEO, or sales leader!

[Korey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Should have followed their own advice about finding a niche. Mostly random flow with little new advice for entrepreneurs & employees. Didn't go deep enough on any topic. Offered very little new that wasn't already published on Saastr. Had trouble following who "I" was, which author was relaying a story. Book needs better editing; found roughly 10 errors.

[Scott Wozniak · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best part about this book is it's weakest part--it's very, very specific. This is a book on the structure and training of a sales team for a software startup that has a product that makes money already but don't have a viral growth rate.

And it has a very specific approach to setting up your sales team. That's the best part. You get real, tactical advice. But that also means that if you're not in that exact situation then this isn't that useful. Also, it's a little dry/technical in it's style.

[Jose Papo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must, really must read book for anyone working in B2B companies or startups. Aaron Ross, wrote the book "Predictable Revenue" and this new book is a complement and a revision of it. It's not only about sales and marketing, but this is a very important part of the book.

He also talks about the importance of nailing a niche (and how to do it), scaling Sales, the importance of doubling your deal size and going upmarket, how to create employee ownership, and how to force yourself to do things(even if you are not fully prepared, what he calls forcing functions).

Overall an amazing book and a must read for anyone building a B2B SaaS, Paas or IaaS business.

[Michał Śmiałko · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book makes you think about sales as one of the sexiest skill one can learn.

[Michal Skurowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books about scaling startups (not only sales). Great read!

[Maris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book I'll come back to! Gives actionable advice on how to grow a company, what kind of VP of sales to hire and at what stage of the company, how to empower your employees to have financial ownership of the company and give their maximum for the company. The author also has 12 kids and makes the point that in order to do something, you need to give yourself forcing functions that enable you to push through hardship - he wanted to have lots of kids with his wife (also via adoption) and thus they had to make enough money to sustain that. But - you can't just assume that if you provide a meaningful product or have a company that is ethical etc, that it'll then start generating revenue. It's important to think about making money as well, the meaningfulness can be added later as well - money cannot be neglected when trying to make a company happen, nor an NGO.
It's also good to ignore his advice where it makes sense and do something unconventional if that works for you. Sort of goes with the advice from "Antifragile" - you want to be able to see optionality in front of you and benefit from it when possible, not follow a strict routine when it doesn't make sense anymore. Great book!

[Tom Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insane. Probably the most timely / relevant business book I’ve ever read.
My new bible for SAAS start up life, super relevant as a SM
Recommended to anyone in a saas startup / scale up - including my entire team!
Lord have mercy that was good 👍

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

171 highlights..maybe a record. Extremely timely for where my business stands right now.

[Anton · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re into tech, sales and entrepreneurship this is a must read/listen. Best and most concrete business book I’ve ever read.

[Dmitri Lisitski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for b2b marketing and sales

This is an absolute must read for IT entrepreneurs, marketing and sales people, and it’s generally useful for b2b marketing and sales people from various industries

[Andreas Kwiatkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parts 6 (Embrace Employee Ownership, on management) and especially 7 (Define Your Destiny, on life and finding meaning) felt a bit out of context, though. Even if helpful at large, as an editor, I would have trimmed them down to an afterword or put their ideas to better use in a separate book each.

[Krzysztof · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book that's extremely hard to rate with a single number (or star rating). I'd give it 3.5, but it some aspects it deserves 5, while in others merely 2.

Bad: It took me much too long to read it through. It is chaotic, badly structured, formatted in a confusing way, with surprising high number of errors and surely would use a good editor. More over it is printed on a crappy paper with a very poor ink - the worst hardcover book in terms of quality that I ever owned (maybe I have a pirated version? IDK). Reading experience 1.5/5.

Mixed: Authors' take on the subject matter is heavily grounded in their experience. It is great if you happen to run very similar businesses that they've run - you get a very specific and very detailed playbook on growing your sales/growth department and hopefully your revenues too. But there is little of universal (yet original and non-obvious) content that would apply to every business. I think this book has an expiry date, it might help you a lot right now, but in 10-20 years no one will look back to it as a valuable resource/reference. It also deviates from its core subject very often, covering stuff that doesn't fit here (parenting?!) or feels like copy-pasted from another book (e.g. time management). Strategic positioning 3/5.

Good: There is a ton of tips, tactics, and solutions for creating and managing sales/growth teams in SaaS companies. There are suggestions that a reader can adapt them to other industries and companies... but only a few are really useful and show you how to do it right. Nevertheless, if you are in the position to leverage authors experience, then this is a pure gold - shows you how to start, how to manage well, how to grow, what problems you should expect at different stages of growing your business, and how to prepare well to face them. You really feel that authors have been in trenches themselves and know their domains inside out, no academic or journalistic mumbo-jumbo, keeping it real all the time. It cover both hard (processes, structures, tools, strategy) and soft (people, emotions, psychology) sides of business. Super useful stuff 5/5.

Ugly: I personally have some issues with a mindset suggested in the book. Things like hypergrowth at all cost (if your company is not growing triple digit y/y you probably should reconsider your career choice) or approach to hiring and firing people (younger are better, go for passion because passionate people work harder and longer, fire low performers as investing in them will surely not pay off).

Overall, I'm happy that I read this book. I'm sure that there is a better book inside, one that had more focus and more time for editors to do their job ;) but this one is good. Even though I can't apply those tactics or don't agree with some principles, knowing and understanding them has a significant value for me. Authors seem to be as authentic as humanly possible and their experience glows from the pages of the book.

[Alan Newton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book for start ups at any stage, but not only start ups, many of the tips and hints outlined in the book can be applied by professionals working within any company.

Aaron Ross is also the author of ‘CEO Flow’ and ‘Predictable Revenue’, two books I’ve previously read and found useful and insightful. Some of those insights work there way back into this book but that’s to be expected.

Ross covers a lot of ground from sales, marketing, operations to HR, pricing, customer management, product, investment, and people development amongst other things. Using his own experience, he takes a holistic look at the key principles that have assisted him and other tech start ups on achieving success. It is a useful playbook that you can go back to time and again. Indeed, my copy is now covered in highlights and notes specific to my own business and how we may apply the insight and good advice.

[Ben Merton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read a lot of books on SaaS and entrepreneurship. I’ve been part of accelerators and have some great mentors.

Nevertheless, I put off reading this book for a long time. I don’t really know why but I’m actually glad I did. Had I read it earlier, I’m sure I would have found it interesting, but today it has a special resonance.

At Unifize, we’re now still in the hazy area of nailing a niche and creating predictability, which means that virtually every page of this book is highly relevant.

If you’re running a SaaS business, nothing in this book will turn everything upside down for you. Rather, it is the specific advice and its ability to help you calibrate that’s worth it’s weight in gold.

As a founder, you spend so much of your day worried about the details that sometimes you forget to come up for air and adjust your grip to take a better swing.

This book is the air and the friendly caddy in one.

[Roman Mastalir · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure how I feel about this book. There were some good ideas, but overall this book was not for me. In general, author's opinion is that each startup will generate 1 mil. USD in a first year. Many ideas and strategies are build around this false claim. Also author struggle to understand how percentage works. No, when your churn rate is 5% per month, it is not 60% of your user base per year... Also the book structure was weird. The whole book is about scaling sales, aiming to CEOs, but some chapters are focused on you as an employee and how you can help your company. Looks like huge mix of many different ideas together.

Over all, this book may be good for late Growth stage startups. If you make less than 1 mil. USD per year, don't bother read it.

[Eduardo Xavier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe I need more time to figure what these guys are sharing here. There are a lot of experiences from their life (not only business). Sometimes I could see myself at many statements. SaaS's life follow a pattern and I was scared to see myself into it.
Thank you the authors for sharing this. I wish I could read something like this at my first startup back at 2000's.
I not giving five stars because I felt the some missing point at content connections between some sections. Also, at the end they start talking to "employee" breaking the entrepreneurshipment atmosphere from most of the book.. last two chapter could be completely removed.

[Kate Ham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very practical book with real case studies that break down actual KPIs & org. structures for use in Enterprise markets.

Rare to find books that discuss ABM functionally rather than theoretically. The authors encourage a more integrated "Smarketing" approach than 99% of startups likely have in place.

Strong argument to be made for the distinction from a "Sales Funnel" to a "Revenue Hourglass" model (including CS).

Part VII/Chapters 23-24 would be great for rep motivation--both for top reps and those struggling to find their groove.

Would re-read if I decided to scale from nothing as an Entrepreneur or VP Sales.

[Max Bromée · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book to read in case one wants to get hands on tools and tips on how to scale the sales processes and teams, but that was very much it around this book. Nonetheless, to have a structured approach around how one builds the sales funnel is key in order to scale a business, so therefore the book is relevant for those that do not have that much experience in the field from before.

My main take away is that the sales process is more multifaceted than what I considered top of mind. And to have sales personnel that work in a structured manner is key in order to scale your revenue. And that they should probably be paid with some kick-back on relevant KRs.

[Bernardo Vailati · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of great business and sales methodologies and advice, all very down-to-earth and explained with tongue-in-cheek humor. The audiobook read by Aaron Ross itself was charming, and his adivce on creating a company culture and advancing your career was particularly inspiring.

On the downside, it covers a hell lot of topics, even going into parenting advice from Aaron who has12 kids (really). It can feel like topics are shifting too fast and without a truly good reason.

Overal, powerful and actionable ideas for people who own or work at SaaS business. Would recommend, would read again.

[Ricardo Urresti · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a mix of great suggestions for entrepreneurs and anyone is creating a startup - several tips on how to grow revenue during the years, lots of examples, some templates to help professionals from hiring to organize their personal and business targets. There are also some key stories from established startups and how they succeed. I liked the book, I've found nice stories and some key advice for even "grown up" companies. The last part sounds more a self-help, but it's a valid advice from Aaron.

[Adrian Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was quite good and had a relatively straightforward narrative about what is required to build a high-growth company. The framework was practical and cogent and had a good mix of the author's personal experience as well as other well-known examples.

Much of the advice wasn't applicable to me since my own entrepreneurial pursuits are more nascent but every topic covered in which I have first-hand experience was spot-on. This is a book that I plan to revisit as I work through scaling my own projects to billion-dollar enterprises.

[Snehal Nimje · Rating 5 out of 5]

We are just starting with setting up our Sales and Customer Success teams for Zoliday - a SaaS-based corporate travel platform. This book just cuts all the fluff and gives a step-by-step guide for growing your early-stage SaaS business. It answers a lot of questions around sales which a lot of founders will have in the beginning. Without this, I am sure we would have committed a lot of common mistakes in hiring.

Must read for founders interested in SaaS, B2B, Enterprise.

[Rick Yvanovich · Rating 4 out of 5]

It should not come as a surprise that there is a process that you need to follow. You can call it a magical one, given that zillions obviously did not see it and it needed these authors to write it out for us. It is there. And if followed then you too may achieve the predictable revenue and rapid growth as did the companies used as examples in this book.

you DO need to follow the process though, that's the simple but challenging solution.

[Esben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gives actionable, real advice towards creating a hyper-growth company. The core ideas are to be ready to face difficulty, ensure specific obligations, be 100% truthful and transparent, become a team of owners, and focus on customer satisfaction as the major growth factor. The difficulties section is reminiscent of "The Hard Thing about Hard Things" with the added bonus that he argues towards pushing yourself and your team towards greatness. Great book.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This should be THE textbook for SaaS salespeople. The authors have done a phenomenal job covering SaaS sales, from corporate strategy level to how marketing and sales can cooperate to generate more business to practical advice where sales can apply in their daily work to improve results. I believe anyone who is in the "business" side of companies can learn a thing or two from reading this book.

[Miles Wen · Rating 3 out of 5]

About 30% of the content in the book were actually pretty good, talking about how to set up proper measurements for sales management etc. But the remaining 70% were just pretty bad. The writing style was poor. The organization of the book is generally non-systematic. I had to skip-read the book to finish it

[T. Laane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely relistening in future years. Such a great book about sales and selling and the sales team. It seems the author has built a lot of sales teams and knows all the ins and outs - and all the mistakes that can be made. So like listening to one of the biggest experts. He would be the best person to set up a new sales organization in any place. Im glad he took the time to write this book.

[Adrian Lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a great time reading this book, the writing is superb, it is like you get know the authors and their real stories make great example. A must read for anyone building a Saas or e-commerce platform, lots of practical advise, learnings, lessons, quotes, pure wisdom. And you should read this too.

[Pinaki Saha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loads of learning

For an early stage founder and new to the game of sales and growth, this book shares a few key insights and perspectives on inbound and outbound sales. Well, few techniques are a bit dated but still the core elements are helpful to understand apples from oranges. Definitely a good read.