Today’s founders are scaling in one of the most complex environments we’ve seen.

Gen AI is collapsing product cycles from months to weeks.

Go-to-market expectations are global from day one.

Tariff changes and regulatory volatility are forcing leaders to rethink where and how they grow.

Teams are distributed. Budgets are scrutinized. And investors want results—fast.

Speed isn’t just expected. It’s demanded.

But speed without clarity? That’s where things break.

From an AI start-up navigating early-stage chaos on the way to a $1.5B IPO, to managing big tech multi-billion-dollar business, and now helping founders build high performing commercial organizations, I’ve seen one pattern repeat itself:

The companies that scale aren’t the ones with the most talent or capital. They’re the ones with the most clarity.

Clarity in purpose.

Clarity in motion.

Clarity in collaboration.

Founders don’t need more frameworks.

They need sharper focus.

What I’m sharing today doesn’t come from a playbook. It comes from real-world experience. Wins, yes, but also the hard lessons.

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve scaled the wrong things. I’ve moved too fast without the foundations in place. And my hope is that by sharing these lessons, you can skip some of the pain—and scale with more clarity, from day one.

Clarity in Purpose: Culture

Before the first sale, before the first org chart—there’s culture.

And it’s not what’s written on the wall. It’s what shows up when no one’s watching.

Great companies are built by great people—people motivated by a shared mission, and supported by an environment that pushes them to grow, both professionally and personally.

Values aren’t posters on a wall. They’re your guiding principles when things get uncertain.

The best expression of this I’ve seen was at Meta.

Values like “Meta, Metamates, Me” give you instant clarity: the company comes first, then the team, then the individual.

Another, “Done is better than perfect,” empowered action.

If you weren’t sure whether to send that deck or hold it back—you sent it. You moved.

When I joined Appier, we had a strong product, great investors, and early traction. But as we started to grow, something felt off. We were trying to be everything to everyone. Smart people, high energy—but no shared rhythm. Internally, teams were improvising. Externally, we were inconsistent.

So we paused and asked: What do we stand for?

I wrote it down: grit, speed, ownership, respect, and a never-give-up attitude. That became our compass for the commercial organisation. From hiring to GTM to retention—everything started to align.

At Meta, when COVID hit, things scattered. Teams went remote. Burnout surged. So we went back to the foundation. We launched something simple: Mission. Community. Client Centricity. We introduced weekly rituals. Peer-led check-ins. Donated ad credits to support small businesses. And we doubled down on how we showed up for clients—with empathy, not just targets, leading with their needs, not our products.

It might sound soft. But that was the year APAC hit record revenue—and our team health scores landed in the highest percentile across the company.

Takeaway: Culture is clarity people can feel. It’s what your team does when you’re not in the room.

Clarity in Motion: Scale

Hustle is essential in any start-up. But hustle doesn’t scale—systems do.

At Appier, we had momentum. Early wins. Strong energy.

But what we didn’t have—yet—was repeatability.

Sales was a mix of instinct, hustle, and educated guessing. It worked—until it didn’t.

Some reps were closing deals fast. Others were spinning their wheels. Everyone had their own pitch, their own decks, their own version of the truth. We weren’t scaling a machine—we were riding a wave.

So we stepped back and asked: What does “good” look like at scale?

We started by narrowing our focus.

We learned the hard way: a broad ICP is a broken ICP.

We were chasing too many verticals. What worked was doubling down on performance-driven app marketers—clients with a clear ROAS target and the ability to pay for higher CPIs. That level of specificity unlocked clarity across sales, product, and marketing.

Then we built the engine:

• Codified our Ideal Customer Profile and Value Proposition
• Defined clear sales stages, complete with playbooks, pitch decks, and objection handling
• Adapted strategies by market, what works in Japan and Korea, does not in Vietnam and Philippines.
• Built performance dashboards around bookings, revenue, ramp time, productivity, win, losses, retention, etc.

We also got honest about sales productivity by region.

Japan and Korea had very different yield profiles than Vietnam or Indonesia. So we modeled revenue per head, ramp times, and quota expectations by market maturity, giving both the business and our people realistic goals.

And while we built infrastructure, we also built resilience.

That’s when I truly understood how critical hiring—and nurturing—great talent was. Not just to the company’s success, but to mine as a leader.

When I joined, onboarding was light: a few days at HQ, then on-the-job training in the market. I’d shadow and coach live—pitching, handling objections in real time. But as we opened offices across 13 countries, that model broke.

Some of our best hires came from unexpected backgrounds—gritty, locally connected, deeply empathetic to customers. But I saw one new hire in Southeast Asia struggle. Not from lack of talent—but because we hadn’t set them up to succeed. We threw them into client meetings without proper product training. I nearly lost them.

That was a turning point.

We launched a structured onboarding program:

• Training on product, sales, account management and operations
• Live pitch assessments before anyone faced customers
• Peer mentoring and role play
• A clear, data-driven probation framework

From that point on, onboarding became sacred.

As we scaled, I also saw something else.

Some teams consistently hired great people. Others didn’t.

Why? Because as I became more removed from the process, interview quality became inconsistent.

There was no shared standard—no clarity—on what to assess, how, or when to move forward.

So I studied how big tech hires. I learned the power of structured assessment frameworks, diverse panel interviews, and role clarity.

We built a hiring playbook:

• Defined core assessment areas: domain knowledge, sales excellence, cultural fit
• Provided sample questions and rating guidelines
• Created a scoring system—candidates needed 70+ to advance

The result? A consistent increase in successful hires and lower attrition post-probation. Those lessons taught me to take full ownership of hiring and onboarding.

Hire the right people, enable them to succeed and you’re already halfway to success.

Scaling isn’t just about growing revenue.

It’s about scaling conviction, consistency, and competence.

And that only happens when your entire system is aligned.

Takeaway: You don’t scale with hustle. You scale with systems. Clarity in motion is what turns messy growth into sustained momentum.

Clarity in Collaboration: GTM Is a Team Sport

When start-ups talk about go-to-market, they often mean sales.

But real GTM success? It’s never a solo act. It’s a team sport—played across product, marketing, sales, and ops.

At Appier and at Meta, some of our biggest progress was made not because we had the best pitch—but because we showed up as one team. But that kind of collaboration doesn’t happen by accident.

During early days, we lost deals simply because functions weren’t aligned. Sales promised features that didn’t exist. Product roadmaps didn’t reflect market urgency.

So we changed how we worked:

• Built GTM councils that brought sales, product, and ops into the same room every week (initially every day!)
• Brought product leads into client meetings, not just to listen—but to co-create
• Turned frontline sales feedback into roadmap priorities, not just “nice-to-have” suggestions
• Created shared KPIs—so teams were rewarded together, not in silos

The impact?

Product velocity improved. Sales cycles shortened. Clients saw us not as vendors—but as true partners.

“One team, one dream” became more than a slogan.

It was a way of working.

It didn’t just solve problems— It sparked innovation

Cross-functional collaboration didn’t just align us—it helped us invent. New products came to life because sales surfaced pain points and the product translated them into solutions.

We launched AI-powered tools that didn’t exist on our original roadmap—because our clients’ needs became part of our process, not an afterthought.

Those launches opened new revenue streams and deepened our value with existing clients. We built empathy, not just alignment.

During the cross-functional workshops teams could share challenges, successes, and even frustrations. These weren’t just “alignment” meetings—they were empathy labs. Suddenly, the product understood the grind of closing a Q4 quota.

Sales understood the trade-offs behind feature prioritization.

We built shared goals across functions:

• Sales targets tied to feature adoption
• Product teams rewarded based on client impact
• Quarterly reviews with joint wins, not just individual performance

GTM isn’t just about what you sell—it’s about how your teams move together. And when that motion is aligned, it creates space for something powerful:

• Innovation: The best ideas don’t come from brainstorming—they come from collision.
• Customer satisfaction: When your teams are in sync, your customer experience is seamless.
• Speed: Clarity reduces friction. Less internal noise = faster execution.

Takeaway: GTM doesn’t live in one team. It lives in the space between them. Clarity in collaboration is what turns effort into impact and ideas into products.

Clarity in Anticipation: Staying Ahead at Every Stage

Most start-ups live in the now. But the best ones build for the future with the next round in mind.

Looking back, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned, from watching companies scale, and from making mistakes myself, is this:

The companies that grow well don’t just react.

They anticipate. And they evolve before they’re forced to.

At Appier, I didn’t always get that right.

When we raised Series A, we were focused—rightly—on product-market fit and early traction. As Chief Revenue Officer, I was head down focused on hitting monthly and quarterly targets. But I wasn’t fully thinking about what came next.

The pressure to scale hit fast. Suddenly, we were facing questions we weren’t fully ready for:

• What will Series B investors expect from us?
• How do we scale to new markets without breaking the model?
• Do we have the right people—not just for now, but for what’s coming?
• How do we on-board and train teams at scale?

Some of those answers came too late.

We had to learn through friction—team strain, messy GTM expansion, a few false starts.

But over time, we shifted.

We started anticipating, not reacting.

We looked further out. We planned talent and infrastructure ahead of the need. And that shift, from tactical to intentional, from what we need now to what we need to be ready for the next funding milestone, made all the difference.

At Series A, your job is to prove the model.

At Series B, your job is to scale it—without breaking it.

We started asking hard questions early:

• Do we have a repeatable GTM motion?
• Can we predict revenue?
• Are we hiring leaders who can scale with us?

We realized expansion wasn’t just about new markets. It was about building operational readiness before the pressure came. By Series B, growth expectations intensified. Go regional, think global:

• Localized product and content
• Built repeatable playbooks by market
• Centralized enablement to avoid reinventing the wheel
• We recruited not just for today’s needs—but for the leaders we’d need in the next phase.

At Series C, it wasn’t about proving the business anymore.

It was about proving it could endure and stand scrutiny in preparation for IPO. We focused on:

• Tighter controls and better reporting
• Diversification of product offerings, upsell and cross sell strategies
• Building a brand story that inspired confidence—internally and externally

When you operate with clarity about what’s next, you stop firefighting. You make better bets. You hire better. You scale more smoothly.

You stop solving for symptoms—and start building for sustainability.

Most founders wait for pressure before they prepare. I made that mistake too. The best ones start preparing while things still feel under control.

Takeaway: Every milestone has a new rulebook. Clarity in anticipation is how you grow into it, not scramble to catch up.

Closing: Lessons Earned, Not Just Taught

We’re entering a decade of acceleration and fragmentation.

AI will reinvent how we build, sell, and scale.

Trade policies and geopolitical friction will increasingly shape go-to-market decisions. And cross-border, asynchronous teams will become the norm—whether you’re ready or not.

In that reality, clarity becomes your most defensible asset.

It aligns your people.

It sharpens your story.

It keeps your growth intentional when everything else is moving fast.

I’ve made mistakes. Scaled the wrong things. Hired too quickly. Built too late. The clarity I’m sharing didn’t come from a framework. It came from experience, and sometimes the hard way.

My hope is that by sharing these lessons, you can avoid the missteps I made…and scale your company with more focus, more cohesion, and more confidence.

Because the companies that thrive in this next era won’t just move fast. They’ll move with clarity.

Editor’s Note

Are you building something bold in AI and gearing up to raise Seed to Series A?

As Venture Fellow at Insignia Ventures Academy (Cohort 9), Fabrizio is partnering closely with us at Insignia Ventures Partners to identify and support the region’s next AI category leaders.

If you’re an AI startup in SEA/APAC, innovating across infrastructure, security, applications, or industry verticals, we’d love to hear from you.

📩 DM Fabrizio on LinkedIn or email fabrizio.caruso@insigniaacademy.vc

And if you’re interested in becoming a Venture Fellow and joining a growing global community of 200+ CXOs, investors, founders, learn more about Insignia Ventures Academy’s 12 week Certificate in Venture Capital program and book a call with our program director to find out more!