Why "triple, triple, double, double, double is dead" misses the point
Every few months, someone in the venture ecosystem drops a hot take designed to grab attention. The latest? "Triple, triple, double, double, double is dead."
Sure, it's provocative. It gets the retweets. But like most social media proclamations about startup fundamentals being disrupted, it misses the deeper reality of what actually drives lasting value creation.
T2D3 explained
For those not steeped in VC jargon, "triple, triple, double, double, double" (T2D3) describes a specific growth trajectory. Starting from $2 million ARR, companies triple revenue for two years, then double for three, reaching roughly $144 million ARR. This framework emerged from analyzing the growth patterns of companies that have become unicorns worth over $1 billion.
Now, with AI companies racing to $100 million ARR at record speeds, the narrative has shifted. Some investors claim we need new metrics entirely. There's talk of "Q2T3" frameworks (quadruple, quadruple, triple, triple, triple) that better reflect today's AI startups reaching $3 million ARR in their first revenue year while quadrupling year-over-year.
The subtext is clear: everything is different now. AI changes the rules, and the old playbooks no longer apply.
Microsoft: A lesson in durable growth
Before we throw out decades of business wisdom, let's examine what sustained, category-defining growth actually looks like. Take Microsoft, which went public in 1986 with $197 million in revenue. The company maintained uninterrupted annual growth from 1986 until 2008, scaling to roughly $60 billion in revenue.
That's 22 years of consistent growth through multiple technology shifts: the rise of personal computing, the internet boom, mobile beginnings, and early cloud computing. During this period, Microsoft's stock splits created an estimated 12,000 millionaires among employees.
What enabled this durability? Microsoft didn't just grow rapidly in year one or two. They built talent density, accumulated advantages through platform effects, adapted to technology shifts, and systematically expanded their addressable market. The company understood that growth rate is a consequence of fundamentals, not a number that exists in a vacuum.
Why growth rate obsession makes sense
There are legitimate reasons for builders and investors to obsess over growth. When a large market is being created or becomes accessible due to a technology shift, the best time to capture market share is during that golden window. Once markets mature and players are established, gaining share becomes exponentially harder.
The power law of technology reinforces this urgency. Category leaders take home the lion's share of value, including revenue, market share, technical moat, talent, and market cap. In winner-takes-most dynamics, "fast enough" often isn't fast enough.
With the rise in AI, this pressure has intensified. Every company wants to be the first to $100 million ARR, the first to achieve product-market fit, and the first to lock in its category position. The technology shift is real, the window is real, and the stakes couldn't be higher.
There's another dimension worth considering. Some argue that growth rates should be higher in the AI era than in the software era because the ratio of labor spend to software spend is estimated to be 10:1, and AI fundamentally displaces labor. If AI products capture value that previously went to headcount, the addressable market and adoption curves could be dramatically different. There's merit to this argument.
But here's where the "T2D3 is dead" crowd goes wrong: they're treating growth rate as the input rather than the output.
Growth is a consequence, not a goal
If we approach this from first principles, growth rate is the result of a series of decisions and conditions. Builders need to get the fundamentals right: find an incredible market, identify an angle of attack that leverages a technology inflection like AI, build a product that wins early customers, execute along a trajectory that expands the addressable customer base, and develop a go-to-market motion that fits customer buying behavior.
There are natural rate limits to consider. Customers need time to adopt new solutions. They need to see ROI before committing fully. High-quality talent takes time to recruit and onboard effectively. These constraints don't disappear just because we're in the AI era.
You can certainly hack growth rates through artificial means, giving away products at negative unit economics, building eye candy that creates short-term excitement without durable value, or burning cash on customer acquisition without understanding steady-state economics. In B2B contexts, many customers experiment when there's market pressure, but sustained usage only happens when there's sustained ROI.
What builders should actually focus on
Smart builders always ask: "Am I building talent density? Am I accumulating competitive advantages through technology, network effects, data, or relationships as I maximize growth?" These questions matter more than hitting arbitrary numerical targets.
The best early products tell stories. They capture ways of thinking, and they hold threads of futures that can evolve and expand. When a builder achieves product-market fit, it becomes evident in unexpected ways: through unsolicited social media mentions, passionate community discussions, and customers becoming evangelists.
This resonates with what we know about conviction-driven building. The magic happens when a builder's deep understanding and hard-earned instincts collide with market reality. That collision creates the kind of early traction that sophisticated investors recognize, even when it doesn't fit neat formulas.
Conclusion
If T2D3 is "dead," it's not because AI companies grow differently. It's because growth metrics divorced from fundamentals were always misleading. The companies that will define the next decade won't be those that optimize for viral spreadsheets about growth rates. They'll be those that build products people truly love, backed by business models that scale sustainably.
That distinction matters more than any acronym ever will.
Smart capital recognizes the difference between signal and noise. When you see a product that sparks real user love, demonstrates builder conviction, shows learning velocity, and exhibits true craftsmanship, that's when growth rates become truly meaningful. Not because they hit some predetermined target, but because they reflect something deeper: a product that's found its moment, and builders who know how to seize it.
The future belongs to those who understand that sustainable growth starts with getting the fundamentals right. Everything else is just math.
