Playbook for Growth: 9 Questions You Need To Answer About Your Business
A formula for building a foundation of growth and scale
I’ve been in the enterprise software business for 25+ years and been lucky to be part of great (and not so great) stories. When startups ask me to join their advisor board, I run them through a model that contains close to 50 questions and leverage some of the below resources.
I’ve learned to ask these questions from my stints at small (AtScale), medium (BusinessObjects) and large enterprise software companies (Microsoft, Google). I’ve experienced the impact of their answers by sitting next 3 types of CEOs (engineering, sales and marketing) when we scaled these companies together.
I hope you’ll find this post useful and if you’d like me to take a look at your company, ping me here or via this form.

Necessity is the mother of invention
You might have heard it before. It’s in the worst economic times that the best companies get started. “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Maybe.
But starting a company and succeeding at it is a little more complex than just having a good idea. There is a large list of factors you should consider, ranging from very personal factors (are you ready) to team, technology and timing questions.
I’ve been in the enterprise software business myself for close to 25 years, across super small, midsize and large corporations. And, anytime I’ve tried to start a business — either at a small outfit or as an intrapreneur (a small business unit inside a large vendor), I got more surprises than I expected.
And the good news is that many have tried, failed or succeeded and written a lot about it. I don’t know that I’ve read ALL the books, but I’ve read many.
My heroes include Steve Blank and his disciple @Eric Ries, icons like Guy Kawasakii and well known entrepreneurs like Ben Horowitz, whose books I’m a big fan of.
You might have heard it before. It’s in the worst economic times that the best companies get started. “Necessity is the mother of invention”. Maybe.
9 Dimensions To Consider
But, if there is ONE BOOK I would tell everyone to pick up and build from it’s this one. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. Why?!

Because the book is well researched and documents a 9 box process that you might find useful as you build your game-changing business. The 9 categories to consider are:
- Key Partners
- Key Activities
- Value Propositions
- Customer Relationships
- Key Resources
- Channels
- Customer Segments
- Cost Structure
- Revenue Streams
I’ll be honest. I don’t agree with all that’s in this book. For a few reasons.
If, like me, you’ve been focused on ENTERPRISE software, you’ll find that the technology examples in the book are really focused on CONSUMER examples. So it will be hard to find a lot of parallels between the business you might be interested in building. Not saying it’s impossible. It will be less obvious.
Second, the book was written before the Product-Led Growth craze and revenue expectations like T2D3 so you might have a hard time connecting those dots.
HOWEVER, the book offers an awesome framework to follow and introduce some great concepts like “Bait and Hook” or “Innocentives”. Pretty clever.
“This book offers an awesome framework to follow and introduce some great concepts like “Bait and Hook” or “Innocentives”. Pretty clever.
5 Questions To Ask
Ok. So that’s for the business part of the equation. But what about YOU?! What about the team you want to surround yourself with?! There are lots of resources for this but the main resource here is YOU.
Are YOU ready?! Here are the 5 questions I suggest you ask before jumping in.
Score the below from 1 to 3 (1 being low). Once you’ve completed, take a look at the low score and weigh them against your aspiration.
- How do you enjoy creating repeatability out of chaos, ambiguity and unpredictability?
- How well do you know and trust the management team and investors? How many of them are former operators with relevant experience that will ACTUALLY help you?
- How well do you understand your company’s key metrics (burn, asp, arr, rule of 40, cac, ltv….etc).
- How well do you understand the market today and tomorrow?
- If this fails completely, do you think you will have learned significant lessons that will help you progress professionally and personally?
There are of course a million more questions you should ask yourself. You should consult your mentors, advisors, significant others before making a decision.
“How well do you know and trust the management team and investors? How many of them are former operators with relevant experience that will help you?”
If you found the above useful for your go-to-market, I have another 50 tools like that.
I’ve helped scale companies of all sizes and will be happy to look at your company and see how I can help as an advisor or board member.
I’m based in Silicon Valley and worked in the technology space for almost 30 years.
I specialize in Data, AI and Analytics. Ping me on LinkedIN for more. Better yet, fill out this form to get started.
- Contact @ linkedin.com/in/brunoaziza
- Form @ tinyurl.com/askbruno