The most dangerous stretch is the middle
The transition between camps is most dangerous in the middle ground, roughly $10M through $50M, where founder-led sales, informal delivery, and founder-centric decisions all reach their limit at the same time. You can lose momentum, blow cash, and burn company culture trying to shift the machine while the climb continues. That's why the Camp 2 danger zone has a name of its own, the Icefall, after the most treacherous section of a real ascent. Most firms that stall on the way to $100M stall here.
How to tell which camp you're really in
Revenue puts you in a band. The real read is two things: how your go-to-market actually operates, and how good your operating system is. If growth still runs on the founder's relationships and the leadership team works hard without one system coordinating it, you're operating a lower camp than your revenue suggests. That's the same signal the Altitude Model and the Operating-System Gap point at, and it's the diagnosis that tells you what to build next.
