The Science of Scaling: Using Data to Decide When -- and How Fast -- to Scale Revenue - Hardcover

Roberge, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1394319428 ISBN 13: 9781394319428

Publisher: Wiley, 2026

Synopsis

Are You Ready to Scale Sales? How Fast?

These two questions are mission critical to the success of any startup, product launch, or market expansion. Yet, too often we rely on gut feel―or let irrelevant signals like a recent fundraise or comparisons to past unicorns―to drive our decisions.

The Science of Scaling offers a rigorous framework for founders, executives, and investors to calculate the answers using their company’s actual performance data―not wishful thinking.

Drawing on insights from hundreds of startups over the past 25 years, Mark Roberge―Founding CRO at HubSpot, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and Co-Founder of Stage 2 Capital―reveals the five most common reasons revenue acceleration efforts fail:

• Premature focus on top-line revenue over consistent customer value creation
• Inadequate, non-data-driven definitions of product-market fit
• Misunderstanding the GTM capabilities needed before hiring salespeople
• Front-loading sales hires instead of pacing hiring based on readiness
• Confusing temporary spikes with lasting competitive advantage

Whether you're a founder starting to scale, an investor guiding your portfolio, or a GM launching a new product, The Science of Scaling is your operating manual.

Don’t guess. Don’t gamble. Scale scientifically.

About this title

About the Author

MARK ROBERGE is the Co-Founder of Stage 2 Capital and a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School. He’s the Founding Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes magazine, Inc. magazine, The Boston Globe, and Harvard Business Review.

From the Back Cover

PRAISE FOR THE SCIENCE OF SCALING

“Scaling should be about science, not speculation.Mark gives founders the formula.”
―DHARMESH SHAH Co-Founder and CTO at HubSpot

“Essential reading for anyone scaling a business. Mark distills complexity into actionable insights that actually work.”
―ALIISA ROSENTHAL Founding Sales Leader at OpenAI

“If you want to build a company that lasts, not just grows fast, read this book.”
―JOSH KOPELMAN Founder of First Round Capital

“A scientific approach to scaling that founders, investors, and founding CROs can all rally around.”
―RON GABRISKO Founding CRO at Databricks

From the Inside Flap

In The Science of Scaling: Using Data to Decide When―and How Fast―to Scale Revenue, the Co-Founder of Stage 2 Capital, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and Founding Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot, Mark Roberge, delivers a scientific, data-driven approach to answering critical business questions for companies seeking to scale. Roberge defines every stage of the scale lifecycle, establishes quantifiable metrics for each stage, explains the signals leaders should look for before they move to the next stage, and walks you through the optimal go-to-market design of each stage.

The author draws on the go-to-market experiences of hundreds of startups from the last decade, identifying five specific issues as the most common causes of failed attempts to scale. He discusses each one and explores effective solutions you can implement in your firm to address each challenge.

The Science of Scaling demonstrates how to avoid premature focus on top-line revenue generation as opposed to consistent customer value creation. It explains how to generate a data-driven definition of product- market fit and shows you how to use that definition to hire the right salespeople―and equip them with the right information― allowing you to position your product using the right capabilities.

The book offers a compelling argument for not front-loading sales hires at the beginning of the year and offers a paced strategy to be implemented throughout the year. Finally, Roberge explains how to identify an enduring competitive advantage you can sustain indefinitely and how to differentiate those from temporary advantages likely to disappear as the market adjusts.

Perfect for entrepreneurs ready to scale their companies, The Science of Scaling is an essential guide packed with reliable data and actionable strategies you can apply today.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1394319428
• ISBN 13: 9781394319428
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304