If you spend time on LinkedIn lately, you'd think the fate of big and small brands is decided by marketing strategy and the perfect 4P mix. That's valuable work. But it assumes marketing still has decisive influence over how a company allocates its GTM growth capital. In many firms, it no longer does.
I believe there's a tendency to assume small companies are just "pre-big" companies. Given enough hustle, time, or capital, they'll grow. But most never do. And it's not because they ignored marketing fundamentals.
It's because their growth capital—the money and resources that power market/customer intelligence systems, sales, product, communications, and founder-led initiatives—isn't aligned with their operational or market reality.
My research modeling 500 lower middle market firms over a decade shows that
67% stayed under $30M in revenue*, even with good markets and ZIRP-era capital. The common factor? Their spending priorities didn't match the way they actually approached the market. In contrast, firms that matched their spending to their strategic strengths were
14x more likely to reach $100M.
The growth gap isn't about ambition, founder grit, or "knowing your numbers." It's about a structural pattern baked into how small companies distribute resources across the capabilities that actually drive growth.
The hidden economics of staying small
Small companies don't plateau because they run out of market. They plateau because their resource mix doesn't match their reality.
In many leadership teams, there's a quiet gap between what they believe they value (customer centricity, product innovation, sales excellence, etc.) and what their budgets, headcount, and executive attention actually support. Very simply, they have a
belief–behavior gap.
The research shows that this gap is predictive of future growth.
Firms that score high on "what we say" but low on "what we fund" underperform, much like a person who lacks self-awareness operates below their potential. Closing that gap is often the first growth unlock.
The Growth DNA™ lens
Every company's market approach can be described along five
orientations:
- Market/Customer: deep market intelligence and responsiveness.
- Product: innovation and technical advantage.
- Sales: distribution muscle and relationship capture.
- Communications: brand visibility and narrative control (ie., marketing comms, advertising, etc.)
- Founder/Purpose: corporate mission and stakeholder alignment.
These aren't a la carte menu options. They're
vectors in a GTM growth capital investment portfolio. All are present, but in different weights. The healthiest companies:
- Know their current dominant orientation (or orientations).
- Balance the other minor to avoid blind, resource misalignment.
- Re-balance deliberately as they move through specific growth stages.
In marketing theory, a
market orientation is often positioned as the most reliable path to growth. My research doesn't dispute that, but it finds that
any clearly understood orientation, resourced accordingly, can outperform peers.
The catch: a total absence of market orientation is almost always fatal, unless offset by extreme strength in another domain (e.g., breakthrough R&D like a cure for cancer, or an overpowering sales engine).
The three traps that keep firms small
1. The Random Allocation Trap:
Budgets swing with internal politics or short-term fires. Capabilities never compound.
2. The Over-Maintenance Trap:
Leaders overspend on maintenance capital to keep the current business running (e.g., plant upgrades, IT system maintenance, regulatory compliance, equipment replacement) while starving GTM of necessary growth capital.
3. The Orientation Rigidity Trap:
The founding playbook never changes, even as the firm scales and/or market complexity demands a new mix.
Stage-gates: Where growth stalls
In the research and modeling, three revenue transitions stood out:
- $10M → $30M: Founder and Product-heavy firms succeed if they professionalize operations and rebalance toward Sales and Market.
- $30M → $60M: Market/Customer orientation dominates; Product-led firms must invest in marketing and sales, and Sales-led firms in customer intelligence.
- $60M → $100M: Balanced portfolios win.** Technology and margin leverage become critical.
In every case, the winners used the stage-gate as a trigger for
capital reallocation and not just scaling headcount or budget.
Escape velocity: Breaking the loop
The firms that break out of the small-company orbit follow three disciplines:
- Orientation Recognition: Map your current orientation portfolio and identify your dominant vector.
- Capital Alignment: Match growth capital to the strengths of that portfolio today, while investing enough across all five orientations to adapt.
- Strategic Evolution: Rebalance deliberately at each revenue threshold, closing belief–behavior gaps before they calcify.
Fully aligned firms in the model grew
4x faster over ten years than misaligned firms, with far less wasted spend.
The strategic cost of staying small
Smallness can be a deliberate choice. But in most cases, it's an accident; the cumulative effect of hundreds of disconnected budget decisions made without a clear link to strategic identity.
For CEOs, CFOs, and boards, the growth challenge isn't about finding the next "growth hack." It's about making sure your GTM growth capital is a faithful expression of your competitive right to win. Budgets aren’t just financial plans, they're declarations of who you are, and whether you intend to stay small.
