Scaling often looks like momentum on the surface: more pipeline, more headcount, more pressure from boards and capital. But underneath? Many leaders feel the strain of decisions moving faster than their systems can support. In this conversation, Mark Roberge sits down to unpack why scaling is not a milestone, but a system that must be intentionally designed and continuously recalibrated. Drawing on his experience as HubSpot’s founding CRO, a Harvard Business School lecturer, and the author of The Science of Scaling, Mark offers a clear, data-driven perspective on how leaders can move beyond reactive growth and build systems that scale with intention.
Mark Roberge is the founding Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, co-founder of Stage 2 Capital, and the author of The Science of Scaling and The Sales Acceleration Formula. He is widely known for helping companies design go-to-market systems that scale sustainably.
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Key takeaways from this episode:
- 04:45 Why scaling too early, often triggered by capital of board pressure, creates more downstream problems than it solves
- 09:20 Why your ideal customer profile is defined by who your sellers actually close, not what’s written in your pitch deck
- 12:43 Why revenue is a misleading indicator of product-market fit (and what leaders should pay attention to instead)
- 13:58 The critical difference between product-market fit and go-to-market fit, and why skipping the latter derails scale
- 19:36 How using leading indicators of retention removes guesswork from growth decisions
- 40:02 Why top-down revenue targets fail, and how bottoms-up capacity planning creates sustainable scale
- 53:55 Why Mark chose to donate all book proceeds to mental health, and why leadership conversations must make room for humanity
Hosted by five-time CRO John McMahon and Force Management Co-Founder John Kaplan, the Revenue Builders podcast goes behind the scenes with the sales leaders who have been there, done that, and seen the results.
This show is brought to you by Force Management. We help companies improve sales performance, executing their growth strategy at the point of sale.
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