Here’s What Investors Will Ask About Your Startup’s Revenue Plan

Three questions you’ll need to answer about how you’ll achieve growth

Joe Procopio
6 min readMar 15, 2021

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image by pch.vector

It seems like a requirement that every startup’s investor pitch deck includes a slide that shows revenue increasing exponentially over time.

The classic definition of a “hockey stick” growth chart.

This slide is actually kind of a fallacy, almost a joke, because what usually happens is a longer-than-expected period of stagnant or even negative growth. Then leadership runs it all back — doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

The classic definition of insanity.

It’s not enough to show that idea + investment = growth

Obviously, a startup can’t just will its way to exponential revenue growth. You can’t wish your way to profitability. You can’t spend your way to scale.

But that magical hockey stick chart is the critical ingredient for return on every single investment in a startup. So it’s a Catch-22. Every investor will expect you to have developed a revenue growth plan that every investor will be maximum skeptical about.

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Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Building TeachingStartup.com. Write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com