This means investors want you to be growing quickly. They’re looking for you to be at the $100 million revenue mark by years 5 to 7 to get a kind of VC-sized returns at exit. This means you need to grow fast. Things can of course vary by industry and region, but here’s the general guide:

Some of the leading VC funds in the US want their seed-stage businesses to grow 200 to 300 percent year-on-year. In Europe, it could be a little less; but the general rule for tech is ‘triple revenue for the first two years and double it for the next three’.

If you set growth expectations below that threshold, you might be seen as timid or too slow-growing, even if your product is cool. The result is that investors won’t choose to put money into your startup.

To meet these expectations, develop your growth numbers carefully and offer logical arguments with supporting data.