You are Meera Ashworth, co-founder and CEO of Cadence Labs, a London scale-up that sells workflow automation to mid-market logistics companies. Your board meets again in six weeks and wants one roadmap, built around one question. Today you have to choose which question that is.
The situation
Cadence employs 190 people across London, Lisbon and Manchester and has reached £14 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), up 55% on a year ago. But growth is slowing while three initiatives pull on the same engineers, salespeople and cash: a push upmarket into enterprise logistics accounts, an expansion into two adjacent verticals, and a new AI analytics module. None has been funded enough to succeed, and none has been stopped. Last night the lead investor put it bluntly: trying to win everywhere is how scale-ups run out of money.
The figures behind his slide: net revenue retention, which tells you whether existing customers spend more or less each year, has fallen from 118% to 104%. The enterprise sales cycle has doubled from 75 to 150 days. Cash stands at £19.8 million against a burn of £1.1 million a month, about 18 months of runway, and the board never wants to drop below 14. The Series C you will need takes six to nine months to close and assumes a credible path to £40 million of ARR. And a larger competitor has just announced its own AI module, while two reference customers worth £1.4 million of ARR are holding their renewals until Cadence says what it will do.
Your team has split. Owen Baptiste, VP Sales & Growth, wants the enterprise motion properly resourced before a better-funded rival closes the gap. Naomi Sarkis, VP Product, argues the AI module will define the category within eighteen months. Grace Lindqvist, the CFO, keeps coming back to the retention line. Some account managers champion the new verticals, and underneath it all runs the option nobody argues for out loud: keep pushing every front at once.