← Every exhibit

Figure Figure 1 Growth that compounds

Four ways to arrive at 40

The crossing lines make the trade-off visible: the score stays at 40 while the commercial posture changes.

A slope chart showing four illustrative ways to reach a combined Rule-of-40 score of 40 percent. Growth falls from 40 to 10 percent while margin rises from 0 to 30 percent across growth-heavy, growth-tilted, balanced, and margin-heavy cases. The combined score remains 40 percent in every case.GrowthMarginGrowth-heavy 40%0%Growth-tilted 30%10%Balanced 20%20%Margin-heavy 10%30%

Reference & Evidence

Source: Author's illustrative worksheet. The examples use the common growth-plus-margin arithmetic and are not company benchmarks.