Why Most Scale-Ups Break at £5-£20m - And How to Avoid It

Reaching £5m in revenue feels like success. Hitting £10m feels like momentum. But for many businesses, somewhere between £5m and £20m is where things quietly start to fracture.

Growth doesn’t stall because demand disappears.
It stalls because the operating model that got you here cannot take you further.

This is the most dangerous phase of scale.

The £5-£20m Danger Zone (What Actually Breaks)

At this stage, most founders are still running the business as if it’s a scrappy scale-up - but the organisation has already outgrown that reality.

Here’s what typically snaps first.

1. Leadership Bandwidth Collapses

Founders and senior leaders become the bottleneck.

• Every decision still routes through a small group
• Teams wait for approval instead of acting
• Firefighting replaces forward planning

You don’t feel “busy”.
You feel constantly interrupted.

Growth slows not because people aren’t working hard, but because the organisation can’t move without you.

2. Process Is Replaced by Heroics

At early scale, heroics work.
At mid-scale, they destroy consistency.

• Sales depends on a few top performers
• Delivery relies on “the person who knows how”
• Marketing output varies wildly month to month

Nothing is truly broken - but nothing is predictable either.

This makes forecasting unreliable and confidence fragile.

3. Systems Don’t Talk to Each Other

Most £5-£20m businesses are running:

• A CRM that isn’t trusted
• A finance system disconnected from reality
• Spreadsheets filling the gaps between tools
• The result:
• Leadership debates whose numbers are “right”
• Teams report activity, not outcomes
• Decisions are delayed because data is disputed

If you can’t trust your data, you can’t scale with confidence.

4. Culture Starts to Drift

Early culture is implicit.
At scale, culture must be designed.

Without clarity:

• Teams interpret priorities differently
• Middle managers create their own rules
• Accountability becomes personal, not structural

Performance becomes uneven - and resentment quietly grows.

Why £20m Feels Harder Than £2m

This stage exposes a truth most founders aren’t prepared for:

The problem is no longer growth.
The problem is coordination.

You’re not building a faster engine.
You’re building a system that allows many engines to run in sync.

That requires a different mindset.

How Businesses That Break Through Do It Differently

Companies that move cleanly through £20m don’t “work harder”.

They redesign how the business operates.

1. They Separate Strategy From Execution

• Leadership defines direction, constraints and priorities
• Teams own execution without constant escalation
• Decisions are pushed closer to the work

This removes the founder bottleneck without losing control.

2. They Engineer the Revenue Engine

Instead of chasing growth everywhere, they lock down:

• Clear ICPs and qualification rules
• Consistent sales stages and conversion metrics
• Predictable delivery capacity

Revenue becomes repeatable, not heroic.

3. They Build a Single Source of Truth

High-growth businesses align systems so that:

• Sales, marketing, finance and delivery share the same reality
• Forecasts are evidence-based, not optimistic
• Leaders spend time deciding, not reconciling data

This is where confidence returns.

4. They Professionalise the Middle Layer

The biggest shift at this stage isn’t tech - it’s management.

• Clear ownership replaces informal influence
• KPIs replace opinion
• Coaching replaces firefighting

This is what allows scale without burnout.

The Core Shift That Unlocks £20m+

To break through this ceiling, founders must accept one uncomfortable truth:

You cannot scale intuition.
You must scale intent.

That means:

• Making decisions explicit
• Designing systems, not relying on memory
• Letting go of being needed in every moment

The businesses that win don’t grow faster.
They operate better.

Conclusion

If your business feels:

• Busy but fragile
• Successful but stressful
• Growing but harder every quarter

You’re not failing.

You’re standing at the point where scale requires redesign.

Handled well, this stage becomes the foundation for £50m+.
Handled poorly, it’s where growth quietly dies.

Ready to scale?

At the £5-£20m stage, growth needs redesign.

>>Book a Scale Readiness Audit - to understand where pressure is building inside your operating model - and what to fix now to unlock the next phase of sustainable growth.