Correct usage of up to / by [closed]

Which one is a correct and effective way of giving someone a compliment.

Jon helped us scale our business up to 40%

OR

he helped us scale our business by 40%

Are both phrases correct? If yes then which one is more effective/convincing?

The first is meaningless without context. "Up to 40%" implies that there is an absolute scale. You might say something like, "we saw business up to 40% more than last year's sales by the first quarter". This way you are comparing it to something specific which is 100%, but there needs to be an explicit reference to the context. The second already implies a reference to past performance. So "up 40%" means that you did 40% better than the last performance period.