The Growth Velocity Model Framework

| Map your startup’s growth maturity across 4 stages and identify the exact growth levers to pull next

Why Generic Growth Advice Fails Your Early-stage Startup

Every founder we meet wants the same thing: faster growth. But faster growth means something completely different depending on where you are. A pre-PMF startup optimizing its paid ads channel is throwing money at a leaking bucket. A Series A company obsessing over founder-led sales is leaving cash on the table. The playbooks are different. The metrics are different. Even the definition of success is different.

Most growth frameworks treat all startups the same. They give you a growth hacking checklist, a conversion rate optimization template, or a content marketing roadmap. These tools assume you’re already productionized, you’ve found a channel that works, and you just need to scale it. That’s not where most startups live. Most are figuring out which channels even work in the first place.

The real gap isn’t between growing and not growing. It’s about knowing which growth stage you’re in and what to do about it. GVM bridges that gap by giving you a diagnostic before anything else.

The Four Growth Stages: An Overview

The Growth Velocity Model maps startups across four distinct stages. Each stage has its own challenges, success metrics, and toolkit. Here’s the landscape:

Each stage builds on the previous one. You can’t run before you walk. You can’t fly before you run. The model isn’t linear in execution, but it is sequential in maturity.

Stage 1: Crawl

The challenge

You have a product. You have early customers. What you don’t have is a repeatable way to acquire them. Growth at this stage is chaotic. It’s founder-led. Every customer is a miracle and you’re not sure why they came or how to find ten more like them.

What you’re really doing

Hypothesis testing at velocity. You’re running controlled experiments on different acquisition channels: direct outreach, content marketing, partnerships, paid ads, events. Most of these will fail. That’s expected. Your job is to fail faster and spot the signal early.

Our deliverables

Growth Readiness Assessment: An honest audit of your product, your market fit signals, and your acquisition infrastructure.

Channel Hypothesis Map: Ranked channels based on founder availability, budget, and early traction signals.

Growth Lever Prioritization: Clear ranking of what to test first and what metrics to watch.

Your outcome

You identify your top 3 growth levers to test and you run 12 weeks of focused experiments. At the end, you’ve either found a repeatable channel or you’ve confidently ruled out enough to point to what’s next.

Timeline

This stage typically takes 3-9 months depending on your burn rate, founder bandwidth, and market dynamics. You’re moving fast, staying bootstrapped, and learning about your customers in real time.

Stage 2: Walk

The challenge

You’ve proven something works. You’ve got one, maybe two channels that consistently bring customers. But it’s brittle. It lives in your founder’s head. It works when your founder is personally executing it. Scale this? Not a chance.

What you’re really doing

De-risking and formalizing. You’re documenting the repeatable process. You’re identifying the bottlenecks. You’re building the operational infrastructure that lets someone other than you execute it. You’re also testing if channel one plus channel two actually compound or if they cannibalize each other.

Our deliverables

Channel Efficiency Audit: Deep analysis of your working channel’s cost per acquisition, customer lifetime value, and contribution margin.

Growth Ops Blueprint: Standard operating procedures, tools, team structure, and early KPI dashboards.

Playbook Template: Documented framework for channel execution that can be handed to a growth hire or team.

Your outcome

You’ve built a growth system around your winning channel. It’s documented. It’s reproducible. You can now bring in a growth hire and hand them something real to execute.

Timeline

Walk typically lasts 6-18 months. Post-seed funding rounds sit here. You’re not yet at scale but you’re past the chaos of Crawl. You’re building what will eventually compound.

Stage 3: Run

The challenge

You’ve got multiple channels working. Your team is growing. Your unit economics are positive. Now the leverage question becomes: how do you make each channel work better? How do you test new channels without cannibalizing your core? How do you scale a team that’s still figuring out what scale means?

What you’re really doing

Multi-channel optimization and expansion. You’re squeezing another 10-15% efficiency out of your core channels. You’re running controlled experiments on new channels without betting the farm. You’re building the team structure that lets you specialize: someone owns paid, someone owns organic, someone owns partnerships. You’re thinking about channel saturation and new market entry.

Our deliverables

Multi-Channel Growth Model: Interaction map between your channels. What compounds? What cannibalizes?

Team Structure Design: Org design that supports specialized channel ownership while maintaining cross-functional collaboration.

Channel Expansion Roadmap: Prioritized list of new channels to test based on your customer profile and competitive gaps.

Your outcome

You’ve got a predictable growth engine with clear unit economics per channel. You can now confidently hire a full growth team and delegate channel ownership. You understand what drives your growth and how different levers interact.

Timeline

Run is typically where Series A and B companies live. The stage lasts 12-30 months depending on your market size and competitive intensity. You’re scaling aggressively but with decreasing chaos.

Stage 4: Fly

The challenge

Your growth engine is running. The problem isn’t can we grow anymore. It’s how do we grow profitably? How do we enter new markets? How do we build moats that competitors can’t copy? Your leverage moves now are strategic, not tactical.

What you’re really doing

Efficiency optimization and strategic expansion. You’re cutting unit CAC by 5-20% through better targeting, better messaging, and channel mix optimization. You’re testing new geographic markets or customer segments where your core playbook might transfer. You’re thinking about retention, expansion revenue, and net retention rate as hard as you think about acquisition.

Our deliverables

Growth Efficiency Score: A single metric measuring your growth system’s maturity across 12 criteria on a 0-100 scale.

Market Expansion Playbook: Go-to-market strategy for one new market, segment, or use case.

Profitability Roadmap: Path to positive unit economics and sustainable growth margins.

Your outcome

You’ve shifted from growth at all costs to profitable growth at scale. You understand your growth ceiling in your core market and you’re making informed bets on where new growth comes from.

Timeline

Fly is where growth-stage and Series C+ companies live. You could stay in Fly for years, compounding advantage and expanding TAM.

Start With Diagnosis

If you’re unsure which growth lever to pull, the problem isn’t effort — it’s clarity.

The Growth Velocity Model tells you where you are, what’s holding you back, and which framework will move you forward next. No guesswork. No generic playbooks.

Diagnosis first. Growth second.