Hypergrowth is real. It’s just not normal. The tech media... spurred on by the V

By Dspitz · October 11, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog

Hypergrowth is real. It’s just not normal.

The tech media... spurred on by the VC community and all the posts on LI and X about astounding growth... is giving folks a warped sense of reality.

Absolutely, there are some phenomenal growth stories out there.

And it’s not just a few companies killing it. There are clearly more than a handful...

But let’s be real... it’s still the SMALL minority.

Earlier this week I posted about how brutal it’s been for the “average” small software company (SaaS and otherwise) to grow. That’s reality for MOST.

I got a number of comments wondering... “Maybe you’re just looking at legacy SaaS?”

Sure, they’re mostly SaaS... though who’s going to self-identify as “legacy”?

So I decided to drill down on the dataset (c/o ChartMogul on BenchSights) to see what the growth distribution looks like.

These are all small companies... but I excluded super-duper small companies (growth rates are pretty much irrelevant when the base is near zero!)...

I looked at over 1,100 companies that were above $200k ARR a year ago (skewing smaller)... for the 12 months that just ended in Q3...

Of these, the median growth rate was 15%. Nearly a third (32%) were flat to down (i.e. they shrank).

But then I made a histogram cut... so I could see that hypergrowth group...

Here’s what I found:

- 11% (122) are growing over 100%

- 5% (52) are growing over 200%

- 2% (28) are growing over 300%

- 1% (14) are growing over 400%

- 1% (10) are growing over 500%

Are these 10 companies likely AI-Native? You betcha!

All these companies at the top are killing it. And they’re not black swans. They have peers.

But they are clearly a very, very small minority.

And they're also the stories people love to tell...

And the ones we all love to hear about.

Even if it creates a little FOMO!