Stepping Up: What It Really Takes to Scale a Cyber Business Beyond $20M
There’s a well-worn growth curve in cybersecurity: early success, steady momentum, and then… a plateau. It usually happens somewhere between $15M and $30M in revenue, when the founders have proven the model and want to go bigger.
I’ve spoken with a number of growing firms in this space. Teams doing great work, achieving real traction, and now looking to "step up" into market leadership. Some are backed by investors. Some are still founder-led. All of them share a common challenge: how to make the leap from a successful services company to a truly scalable business.
In a previous post, I outlined practical tips to grow a cybersecurity business, covering service design, customer engagement, and pricing strategy. This post goes a step further, looking at what it really takes to scale sustainably when you’re already doing $15–25M in revenue and aiming for $100M+.
Because at that level, the game changes.
You Need Structure That Matches Strategy - But Don’t Build a Castle on Sand
Many cyber companies hit $20M still running with a flat structure: the founder or CEO sitting across everything, a few senior delivery leads wearing multiple hats, and ad hoc sales and ops support. That might work in the early years, but it becomes a serious strain on growth as complexity increases.
Scaling successfully means deliberately designing your organisation around where you’re going - not where you’ve been. That starts with getting clear on the strategy, then building the structure to support it.
Here’s what that often includes:
Executive Team - A small, capable group with clear ownership across sales, delivery, finance, and operations. These roles must be filled by people who’ve led and scaled service businesses before - not just strong individual contributors promoted internally.
Capability or Service Line Leaders - People who own a domain (e.g. GRC, DFIR, SOC, Identity, etc), with full accountability for growth, delivery, margin, innovation, and CX. They must think like GMs of their portfolio - not just senior practitioners.
Pre-Sales and Solutioning Expertise - As deals grow more complex, you can’t leave technical scoping to delivery teams or sales reps. You need people who can shape opportunities, differentiate your offer, and protect margin from day one.
Dedicated Sales and Account Management - Founder-led sales breaks at scale. So does relying solely on referrals. You need experienced sales professionals with a structured approach, backed by strong marketing and commercial operations.
A Central Ops Backbone - Someone needs to own process, tooling, data, and reporting. Operational maturity becomes essential as service lines, clients, and internal complexity all grow.
Each of these roles needs to be introduced at the right time.
Under-hiring creates bottlenecks. Over-hiring adds cost and complexity before the business is ready. The key is knowing when each capability becomes critical, and investing accordingly.
It’s also important to ensure the people in these roles are set up for success. That means more than a title and a job description. It means clarity of purpose, accountability, and the right incentives, particularly for sales and executive leaders, where growth depends on consistent, aligned execution.
Note that building out this structure, especially at the executive level, can create a short-term hit to margin. But done well, it unlocks scale, increases enterprise value, and sets the foundation for long-term growth.
When structure, timing, and incentives work together, the business builds real momentum.
Culture Won’t Scale Unless You Intend It To
“Being mates with the boss might fade - but trust, transparency, and purpose can take its place.”
As the business grows, so does the gap between how things used to feel and how they need to run.
In the early years, culture is organic. It forms naturally - through mateship, shared delivery pain, in-jokes, and a tight-knit team. Everyone knows everyone. Feedback is fast. The boss is in the trenches. Drinks are fast flowing.
But that small-team vibe doesn’t scale. It can’t. And pretending otherwise creates confusion, resentment, or worse - attrition.
The businesses that scale successfully are those that deliberately invest in culture, knowing it will evolve. They:
Communicate clearly and often - especially during change
Set expectations early about how roles, structure, and relationships will shift
Build shared values that are actually lived (not just wall art)
Create new rituals and moments of connection as team size grows
Recognise that being close-knit is different from being cliquey
Most importantly, they understand that “being mates with the boss” might fade - but trust, transparency, and purpose can take its place.
Evolving Services Is a Strategic Imperative, Not an Optional Tune-Up
Many cybersecurity firms build their early success on a few proven service lines - usually those where the founder(s) honed their skills: penetration testing, managed security/EDR, GRC consulting, maybe some project-based engineering or advisory. These offerings can take you a long way - even to $20M or more. But beyond that point, they start to show their limits.
To scale sustainably into the $30M–$100M+ range, service evolution needs to be constant, deliberate, and market-informed.
Here’s what that looks like:
Anticipate Vendor Shifts - If you're offering managed EDR, MDR, or SIEM services, you're in a race with the vendors. Major players are increasingly going direct or building platform-native services that undercut MSSPs. Your differentiation needs to go beyond “we’ll manage it for you.”
Use AI Where It Adds Real Value - Tasks once handled by junior SOC analysts or GRC associates (alert triage, basic risk assessments, reporting) are now being augmented or replaced by AI tools. If you’re not leveraging these efficiencies, your cost base and pricing will suffer. If you are, that needs to be reflected in your delivery model and talent mix.
Move Beyond GRC-as-a-Service - Many compliance services have become commoditised. To stand out, firms need to shift to risk-led, business-aligned advisory, especially in regulated sectors or complex environments. This often means pairing compliance capability with industry-specific expertise or technical depth.
Package Services to Create Stickiness - Selling one-off pen tests won’t drive sustainable growth. Instead, combine point solutions into managed or recurring offerings that solve broader problems. Think: Threat Exposure Management, Continuous Controls Monitoring, Incident Readiness Programs.
Own the Outcome, Not Just the Hours - Clients increasingly expect providers to share responsibility for outcomes and not just provide capacity. That might mean fixed-fee engagements, service-level commitments, or co-delivered roadmaps tied to business objectives. These models aren’t easy, but they’re defensible and harder to displace.
Retire Legacy Offerings That Don’t Scale - This is hard but necessary. If a service is low-margin, high-friction, and doesn’t ladder into your broader strategy, it’s time to either evolve it or exit it. Holding on too long limits your ability to invest in the next growth opportunity.
The takeaway: your service catalogue can’t be static. It’s a living, breathing part of your business strategy. The most successful mid-size cyber firms are those who constantly listen to the market, analyse their performance, and reshape their offerings to stay relevant, efficient, and differentiated.
Capital Helps - but It’s Not a Strategy
Bringing in external investment can unlock growth, accelerate hires, fund capability building, and expand your footprint. But it also comes with overheads - some obvious, others less so.
Here’s what often gets missed:
Increased Reporting and Governance - With institutional capital comes board packs, monthly metrics, and strategic reviews. Founders who are used to informal decision-making often struggle with the time, rigour, and transparency required. If you're not ready to operate like a $50–100M business, your investors will force you to - quickly.
Real Growth Expectations - PE investors aren’t in the game for modest growth. They’re targeting 3–5x value creation within a specific timeframe, often through a combination of EBITDA uplift and inorganic expansion. That creates real pressure to deliver - not just against revenue, but margin, operating efficiency, and strategic execution.
Strategic Alignment Becomes Crucial - Misalignment between founders, investors, and leadership teams can derail progress. Everyone needs to be clear on the growth thesis - whether it's regional expansion, vertical focus, service innovation, or acquisition, and how value will be realised.
Capital Magnifies Strengths and Weaknesses - If your GTM model is broken, adding capital just helps you scale failure faster. If your ops aren’t scalable, new clients will stress the system. If your executive bench is thin, you’ll struggle to absorb the pace of change.
This isn’t to say capital is a bad move. It can be transformative and unlock growth. But it's not a shortcut, and it's definitely not a substitute for strategy. The most successful scale-ups treat investment as fuel for a well-built machine, not a replacement for building one.
Sales and Marketing Need Their Own Engine
The founder-led sales model that works at $5M breaks down fast at $25M.
To scale, you need:
Clear messaging and market positioning
Structured pipeline management and forecasting
A marketing function that does more than post on LinkedIn
Sales leaders who know how to build repeatable processes - not just chase logos
Most mid-size cyber businesses underinvest in these areas. They confuse word-of-mouth traction with market demand. But to dominate, you need to generate demand, not just respond to it.
Real Scale Is Holistic, Not Heroic
The companies that make the leap don’t do it through heroics. They build a system that works. Measured, tuned, improved.
That system includes:
The right executive talent
A service portfolio that adapts
Clear strategy and measurable goals
Strong GTM, brand, and demand generation
Solid operational foundations
Each part is important. But what matters more is how they interconnect. That’s what creates momentum. And that’s where many businesses stall - because their machine runs in parts, not in sync.
Where ALLANEX Comes In
At ALLANEX, I help cyber, cloud, and tech services firms make the leap - from founder-led hustle to scalable, structured growth.
That means building the right operating model, sharpening GTM execution, evolving services, and creating the momentum to scale confidently and sustainably.
If you're at $15–30M and looking to grow - whether you're backed by capital or bootstrapped - let's talk.