Stuck-to-Scale
Stuck-to-Scale is Graylemon's model of the six stages a venture moves through: Ideate, Define, Build, PMF, Market and Grow, each with the one question it has to answer before the next can start. A stalled venture is usually working on the wrong stage's question.
What it means
Each stage has its own question: is the problem real, what exactly are we building, does it exist and work, do they keep using it, can we reach them repeatably, does it compound without us. Most ventures that stall are answering a later question before an earlier one is settled, such as scaling marketing for a product people don't yet return to.
Naming the stage honestly is often the most useful diagnosis there is, because the fix for one stage does nothing for another.
How we use it
Our method Every framework in our library sits at a Stuck-to-Scale stage, and we wrote a build log for each stage in the Journal, starting with Ideate: is the problem real?
Related terms
Published 28 September 2026. All terms