The Level 10 Opportunity Filter
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
As revenue and audience grow, opportunities arrive faster than they can be evaluated, and saying yes to each profitable one produces a scattered portfolio. Ravi's filter sets an explicit numeric threshold — a level 10 opportunity is one he believes can produce at least $10m a year — and everything below it is refused, even when it would clearly make money. The mechanism is that the opportunity cost of a $2m product is not zero: it is the attention that would otherwise compound the vehicle already earning $10m or more. He frames it as raising standards, and notes the threshold must rise as you do, so eventually $10m opportunities get declined in favour of $100m ones.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Set the threshold from your next milestone
Do not anchor on this year's target. Ask where the business needs to be two rungs out — if the goal after $10m is $30m or $50m, the filter must be set at a level that can carry you there.
Pro tip State the threshold as a number you can test any incoming idea against in under a minute.
- 2
Score the opportunity honestly
Estimate the realistic annual revenue ceiling of the new thing on its own. Ravi's test is whether he can see a clear path to at least $10m a year from a new product, based on having already done it once.
Watch out Excitement inflates estimates. Ask what evidence exists that anyone has reached that number in this category.
- 3
Compare against doubling down
The real comparison is not new thing versus nothing, it is new thing versus more of what already works. If the current vehicle can absorb the same effort and produce more, the new opportunity loses by default.
Pro tip Ask: could this same effort take the existing product from $20m to $40m?
- 4
Say no explicitly and tell the team
Turn the threshold into a public rule so the organisation stops surfacing sub-threshold ideas. Ravi wound down portfolio companies worth a few million a year because they could not deliver the exit he wants.
Pro tip A few extra million changes little once personal expenses are covered; name the number that would actually change your life.
Watch out Expect this to feel wrong — you are declining real, provable profit.
- 5
Check strategic fit, not just size
A qualifying opportunity should also feed or be fed by the core vehicle. Ravi requires every product sold to include the membership, so scale in one place compounds the other.
Watch out A large but unrelated opportunity recreates the two-business problem.
- 6
Raise the threshold as you clear it
Once $10m products are routine, the filter has to move to $100m or $200m. Ravi is explicit that the discipline never gets easier because the things you decline keep getting bigger.
Pro tip Re-set the threshold at each annual planning meeting rather than drifting.
In the wild
Ravi started several portfolio companies in one year, which added a few million dollars of revenue. Reviewing them the following year, he concluded that a few million extra dollars would not change his life in any meaningful way, while a $30m or $50m outcome would. Because none of those companies could plausibly produce the $100m to $300m exit he wants within three to five years, he began winding them down despite them being cash-positive, and redirected the attention into Scaling School, the membership he believes can reach $100m in ARR.
→ Fewer revenue lines, but every remaining one aimed at a nine-figure outcome.
A creator doing $5m a year is offered a managed sponsorship-brokerage arm that would reliably add $1m annually. Applying the filter, they estimate the arm's ceiling at $2m to $3m, well below their $10m threshold, and note that it would consume the operations lead for two quarters. The same two quarters spent fixing fulfilment and launching the membership has a credible path past $10m. They decline the brokerage and put the operations lead on the membership launch instead.
→ Turned down $1m of near-certain revenue to protect the path to a compounding, higher-multiple product.
Common mistakes
Optimising for beating last month
Ravi notes everyone wants more cash this month than last, but that instinct blocks the longer game. Sometimes you have to pull up on the reins and accept lower revenue to fix what limits the next three years.
Collecting small yeses into a Frankenstein
Each individually attractive opportunity looks harmless. Accumulated, they produce a little money in many places instead of a lot of money in one or two, and the founder's attention is the thing that fragments.
Setting the filter without an exit view
Without a clear picture of the outcome you want, any profitable idea passes. The threshold only bites when it is derived from a specific destination such as a $100m to $300m exit.
From the transcript
“I won't start something unless I think it's like a level 10 Opportunity means I have to be able to make at least $10 million…”
“it's almost like raising your standards, once you decide this is I'm only gonna go after level 10 opportunities”
“So a tactician is like trying to win the battle, and a strategic is trying to win the war.”
From the episode
$25m CEO Coaches me on How to Grow our Business - Ravi Abuvala: Scaling with Systems
Ravi Abuvala: Scaling with Systems