$50 million in revenue in 5-6 years is the conventional wisdom entrepreneurs hear about what venture capitalists are looking for.  Unfortunately, when you dive into the hard data, as we’ve often shown in the past, it can reveal some interesting and counter-intuitive realities. 

This analysis which looked at the top 100 software company IPOs shows that even some of the most, if not the most successful software companies (read: Microsoft & Oracle) took longer than 5-6 years to hit the $50 million mark. 

Some of the contrarian takeaways are highlighted below:

• Only 28% of the most successful public software companies reached $50 million in annual sales in 6 years or less. 
• 50% of these companies took 9 or more years to reach $50m in revenue.
• Microsoft took 8 years to reach $50 million in sales; Oracle took 10. 

To bring you interesting data-driven perspectives on the innovation economy, we will occassionally share relevant analytics created by others with you.  The above come from an analysis by Christian Chabot of Tableau Software. 

If you have seen an interesting data-driven perspective into the innovation economy and think we should feature it, please email us at team(at)chubbybrain.com