In this in-depth conversation, Adam King, CEO and co-founder of Territories.ai, shares his extensive experience in driving hypergrowth, managing sales teams, and building B2B SaaS companies from the ground up. His expertise spans from taking startups from zero to $1M ARR, navigating the challenges of scaling to $10M and beyond, and effectively utilizing outbound sales and AI to achieve sustainable growth.
The Motivation to Focus on Driving ARR from Zero to Hyper-Growth
Adam’s career began in the commercial insurance sector, where he helped grow Citadel Insurance Services’ revenue from $100K to $15M in four years. This experience ignited his passion for building businesses from scratch, motivating him to focus on startups. Following this, Adam played a key role at Qualtrics during its hypergrowth phase, helping the company scale from $85M in ARR to $750M before its $8.5 billion acquisition by SAP. His journey includes helping Lucid Software launch its enterprise motion and accelerating Beehive AI’s growth from $150K ARR to $2.5M within a year.
Key Differences in Scaling from $0 to $1M ARR vs. $1M to $10M ARR
Adam emphasizes that the growth phase between zero and one million is unique and requires hyper-focus on identifying the best customer, rather than attempting to cater to every customer in the market. Founders should be directly involved in early-stage sales (at least the first 10-15 customers) to understand customer needs, refine product-market fit, and replicate success.
For the $1M to $10M ARR phase, Adam highlights the importance of scaling processes and transitioning from founder-led sales to a repeatable, scalable GTM engine. This stage introduces more outbound efforts, as well as a heavier reliance on inbound marketing strategies to complement outbound sales.
Key Strategies for Identifying the Best Customer
One of the key challenges that Adam faced during his time at Platform One was finding the best-fit customers. Initially, the company cast a wide net, targeting multiple industries. However, through data-driven insights and customer interviews, Adam’s team identified that the best ICP was in B2B manufacturing, which drove significant growth. After narrowing their focus, Platform One grew from setting 10-12 meetings a month to 40 meetings, resulting in a 450% increase in U.S. revenue.
The key lesson Adam emphasizes is focusing on the industries and customers with the quickest conversion rates, largest deal sizes, and highest lifetime value. This data-driven approach allows startups to prioritize high-impact accounts and avoid wasting resources on less profitable leads.
Outbound Sales as a Core Strategy
For early-stage startups, outbound sales is crucial. Adam’s team heavily relied on cold calling, with 80-85% of meetings set via outbound efforts. He attributes their success to personalized outreach and leveraging voicemails and follow-up emails to build brand recognition. While many claim that cold calling is dead, Adam disagrees—if done right, it remains a highly effective channel.
He also emphasizes the need for strategic follow-ups, where a voicemail, combined with a personalized email, significantly increased the chance of prospects remembering the call. The secret sauce is consistency in messaging and persistence, allowing SDR teams to set 15-16 meetings per rep, significantly boosting pipeline growth.
The Balance Between Inbound and Outbound
As a company scales from $1M to $10M ARR, inbound marketing becomes increasingly critical. While outbound can drive initial traction, inbound strategies like content marketing, SEO, and paid media help build long-term brand recognition. Adam warns that relying solely on outbound can hinder future growth, as a strong inbound engine becomes essential for sustaining momentum.
The Role of AI in Driving Go-to-Market Strategies
AI plays an instrumental role in enhancing go-to-market (GTM) strategies. Adam uses AI to automate time-consuming tasks, allowing him to focus on high-value activities like refining ICP and messaging. For example, he leverages ChatGPT to role-play buyer personas, testing various messaging approaches to identify what resonates with different customer profiles.
AI also helps sales teams personalize their outreach at scale, providing real-time data on the best prospects and tailoring messaging based on customer pain points. Adam predicts that AI will not replace sales teams but will instead amplify their efforts, making sales teams more efficient and effective.
Differentiating in a Crowded Market
Competing in a saturated market like CRM or sales enablement requires deep customer understanding and differentiation. For example, new CRM companies like Adio focus on solving specific pain points for Salesforce and HubSpot users, allowing them to carve out a niche despite stiff competition. Adam recommends startups find underserved segments within their market and build hyper-targeted solutions for them.
At Territories.ai, Adam’s team relies on customer interviews and competitive analysis to identify gaps in the market. By focusing on underserved revenue operations teams, they can deliver highly relevant solutions and avoid directly competing with established giants like Salesforce.
KPIs at Different Growth Stages
In the zero-to-one phase, Adam focuses on pipeline generation, deal progression, and win rates. It’s essential to track the quality of the pipeline, not just the volume. As a company scales to $10M and beyond, KPIs shift towards customer retention and upsell opportunities. Adam emphasizes the importance of Net Revenue Retention (NRR), as 70% of new revenue should eventually come from existing customers through expansions, renewals, and upsells.
Final Advice for Founders
Adam concludes with a piece of advice for founders in the early stages: growth is hard, but persistence is key. Overnight success stories often take years of trial and error. Founders must remain focused on building a solid foundation with the right customers and refine their approach through continuous iteration.
