From Impossible to Inevitable
On this pageWhat I like
What I like about this book
It is a book about growth written by two people who have done it in software, and it reads like a playbook with case studies behind it. I like that it deals with the early, awkward stage of finding a niche and getting the first repeatable sales, as well as with scale. It is aimed at recurring revenue companies, so adapt the examples if you sell something else.
Why read it
A practical guide to taking a recurring revenue company from first sales to hypergrowth, built on a niche, a pipeline and more sales capacity.
The problem it addresses
Early-stage software companies often get stuck between the first customers and a repeatable engine. Revenue comes from the founder's network and personal effort, and it stops growing when the founder runs out of time. Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin wrote the book for that moment. Ross is the author of Predictable Revenue, and Lemkin founded the SaaS community SaaStr, so both have spent years watching how recurring revenue companies grow or fail to.
What changes after you read it
You stop treating sales as a series of favours and start treating it as a system. You ask who your best-fit customer is, how you will reach more of them, what the steps are from first contact to close and which part you can give to someone else. You also get a benchmark for how other companies handled the same questions, which is hard to find otherwise.
How it connects to running a business
A company with recurring revenue has an advantage: each customer you keep adds to the base, and growth compounds. That only works if the front end is reliable. The book shows how a niche, a pipeline and a trained team fit together, and how the stages differ as revenue grows. Even if you do not sell software, the structure is useful for any business that sells repeat services.
When to read it, and when to skip it
Read it when you have some product and some customers but no predictable growth. It suits founders and sales leaders at the stage of building a team. Skip it if you have no product yet, because you need something to sell before the advice applies, and skip it if you sell one-off projects, where the recurring revenue mechanics will not fit. The book also reflects the software market of the mid-2010s, so check the specifics against today's channels.
Turning growth into a repeatable playbook
The strongest idea for me is that a sales process can be written down, tested and improved. Record what you do at each step, which leads convert and what you changed. Once that is documented, you can train people to follow it and decide which parts can be automated. The book's case studies show companies that did this deliberately, and a log of your own decisions on pricing, targeting and hiring makes it easier to learn from each change.
Who it's for
Key take-aways
Book summary
Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin set out how software and other recurring revenue companies move from early traction to very fast growth. Their argument is that hypergrowth comes from a small number of deliberate choices: picking a niche you can dominate, building a reliable pipeline and then adding sales capacity once the process works. The book mixes the authors' own experience with case studies from recurring revenue firms, and it was published by Wiley in 2016. Ross is also known for Predictable Revenue and Lemkin for founding SaaStr, and the book carries ideas from both.
Why the early stage is the hard part
The book opens with the difficulty of getting from nothing to the first real revenue. Many companies find that things which seem impossible at that point, such as a first large customer or a first repeatable channel, become routine later. The authors want the reader to see that the early phase calls for focus and persistence more than a clever strategy. They also point out that the problems of a company with a few customers differ from those of a company with hundreds, so the advice depends on where you are.
Nailing a niche
A central instruction is to choose a narrow market and win it before expanding. A niche makes it easier to write a clear message, find the right buyers, learn what they need and produce references that other buyers in the same segment trust. It also reduces the cost of selling, because each win makes the next easier. Trying to appeal to everyone usually produces a vague message and slow sales. The authors treat a narrow focus as a requirement for growth and not a limitation.
Building pipeline
Ross is best known for his work on outbound sales and the separation of roles. The book carries the idea that pipeline should be created on purpose. That means having people whose job is to generate qualified opportunities, and not relying only on inbound enquiries or the founder's contacts. A predictable stream of opportunities lets you forecast and plan hiring. The authors argue that a company cannot grow quickly if its pipeline is left to chance.
Doubling sales capacity
Once a process produces results, the next step is to scale it. The idea is to add salespeople once the process works and to give each of them a proven playbook to follow. The logic is that adding people to a process that already works multiplies its output, while adding them to one that does not only multiplies the confusion.
Reading it by stage
The title points at a change over time: something that looks impossible at the start becomes inevitable once the engine is running. I would read the book with your own stage in mind. What helps in winning the first few customers is not what helps at a few million in annual revenue, and the examples are most useful when you match them to your size. A founder who builds a large sales team too early, or who keeps selling personally for too long, will find growth stalls in either case. Treat each chapter's advice as a question about where you are and what is missing.
Customers after the sale
Because recurring revenue depends on customers staying, the book also gives attention to keeping and growing them. Lemkin in particular is known for stressing that a company grows faster when existing customers expand their spending than when it relies only on new customers. Customer success and account management therefore sit alongside sales as parts of growth. Losing customers at the same rate as you win them stops a company from compounding.
What the book asks of the founder
Running through the advice is a change in the founder's role. At the start the founder is the main salesperson, the product expert and the source of most leads. For the company to grow, some of that has to be handed over: the pitch becomes a script others can use, the target list becomes a task for a specialist and the founder moves towards designing the system. This is hard for people who are good at selling, since it means trusting a process they did not build alone. I think this is the most valuable point in the book for anyone who wants the company to grow beyond their own working hours.
Lessons from the case studies
The book draws on companies that reached high growth in recurring revenue markets. The point of the examples is to show patterns: focus on a niche, discipline in process and willingness to invest in the team. The stories give the advice weight, though readers should remember that they describe winners, and that the same choices do not guarantee the same result for every company.
What to do with it
- Write a one-sentence definition of your best-fit customer and test it against your last ten wins.
- Count how many new qualified opportunities you create each week and who is responsible for creating them.
- Document the steps from first contact to signed deal so that someone else could follow them.
- Hire the next salesperson only when the existing process produces results without you.
- Track retention and expansion with the same attention you give to new sales.
