Tim is the senior climate reporter at TechCrunch. While onstage at the TechCrunch All Stage 2025 event, he imparted tons of wisdom about how to scale your company the right way. De Chant, who teaches MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, stressed the importance of proactive planning. He argues that it is essential to effective scaling.
This talk comes as no surprise, as De Chant is no stranger to the world of startups and innovation. He has a uniquely impressive track record in founding companies—three public, six private, all combined founding and seeded over a dozen other startups. After recently serving as president of Tesla, De Chant became Chief Operating Officer of Lyft. This strategic move not only made City Hall look forward-thinking, it deepened his industry expertise. He was awarded the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT in 2018. There, he researched new climate technologies and developed new business models for journalism.
In her remarks at the event, De Chant underscored the importance of pursuing a full-fledged mature go-to-market strategy. He explained how businesses can determine when they are ready to scale by looking at multiple performance indicators. He underscored the need for a four-to-one lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio. This ratio is especially important for growth-oriented companies seeking investment.
Jon McNeil, another expert on hand at the event, provided his own playbook for when to know if you’re ready to scale. Prior to joining WRI, McNeil received his PhD in environmental science, policy, and management from the University of California, Berkeley. He additionally received degrees in environmental studies, English, and biology from St. Olaf College. Most importantly, in the process of being scaled, he urged a focus on identifying what your customer wants.
“Do 40% of your customers say they cannot live without your product?” – Jon McNeil
McNeil said the presence of this kind of metric is a sign of product-market fit. He went on to describe the iterative process that produced this fit, explaining that…
“We keep adding, adding, adding and tweaking the product until we get to 40% and then we say, okay, boom, now we’ve got product market fit.”
He further highlighted that the metrics need to be quantifiable and fact-based, instead of feeling-based or subjective.
“It’s actually objective and measured. It’s not a feeling, it’s not a sense. It’s a metric.” – Jon McNeil
Once companies get to this pivotal point, McNeil painted a picture of how funding approaches begin to shift.
“Then we pour in the cash. But before then, we’re doling out cash $100,000 at a time just to get to different stage gates.” – Jon McNeil
Looking back on his time scaling Tesla, he was surprised both by how quickly his under-20-person team had created such amazing growth.
“We scaled Tesla in 30 months from $2 billion in revenue to $20 billion in revenue.” – Jon McNeil
