Many entrepreneurs believe that to scale their startup, you need to invest in marketing strategies. But if these strategies are for real, they cannot make this job alone.
Every entrepreneur dreams of growing their business. In the case of startups, this can happen in a short period due to the growth culture focused on creativity, openness to employee participation, risk investments, among other factors.
The growth of a startup is directly related to its scalability. A startup is considered scalable when it can greatly expand its number of customers, users, and billing in an accelerated way without increasing its costs in the same proportion.
In this article, you will understand how you can scale your Startup business using Agile Methodologies to make your team produce even more.
How to Scale a Startup
Startup companies are early-stage technology-based companies that tend to develop for a large company. Every startup aims to come up with a product or market fit, that is, identify a problem in the market and offer a solution with innovative services or products.
Startups are looking for a teachable, repeatable, and scalable business model. Therefore, the growth potential of these companies is enormous. However, startups work with great uncertainty and constantly adjust the product with the help of feedback from their customers.
Scale Startup life-cycle
Large-companies
These are large companies that, at some point in their trajectory, need to reinvent and adapt.
Small-business
Small business startups are small companies. Small entrepreneurs tend to aim for financial independence.
Buyable
These startups have great ideas and that need investment to turn the business around. Crowdfunding and angel investors are interesting alternatives for this startup.
Lifestyle
These are startups that arise based on what the entrepreneur loves. Passion is your biggest motivation. Sometimes greater than the financial return.
Social
The goal of this startup is to solve a problem to make a difference in a community.
Scalable
This is a type of scalable startup because its structure and characteristics provide rapid growth without the need for large investments. The biggest objective is to generate a large amount of capital.
And these startups are capable of doing this, as they present a valuable solution to the market. However, for them to be able to generate the capital they want, they are looking for investors.
The 4 Types to Scale Growth for Startups
1. Classic startup growth
It prioritizes efficiency in the face of uncertainty. Starting an innovative company is like jumping off a cliff and riding a plane on the way down; being resource-efficient allows you to slide to minimize the rate of descent, giving you time to learn about your market, technology, and team before you hit the ground.
Your product satisfies a strong market demand for a specific problem or needs a solution.
2. Classic Scale-up growth
It focuses on efficient growth once the company is confident about the environment.
This approach reflects classic corporate governance techniques such as applying minimum fees. So that the return on investment (ROI) of corporate projects consistently exceeds the cost of capital.
This type of optimization is a good strategy to follow when trying to maximize returns in an established and stable market.
3. Fast scaling
It means sacrificing efficiency to increase the rate of growth. However, because Fastscaling takes place in an environment of certainty, the costs are well understood and predictable.
Analysts and bankers feel confident they can create elaborate financial models that work, down to the penny, the likely ROI of a quick investment.
4. Blitzscaling
This scale aims to sacrifice efficiency for speed, not waiting to make sure the sacrifice pays off.
If the classic growth of startups is to reduce your descent rate while trying to build the plane, Blitzscaling means building that plane faster, then tying up and starting a set of jet engines while you’re still building the plane.
How to make Agile work on startups?
Becoming an agile organization is a long and tedious journey. So the first question any aspiring agile startup must answer for itself is simple: is it a sales, product, or technology-driven company?
Not all organizations need to become truly agile, and they can still create a great culture and deliver returns to investors.
However, if competition is fierce, technology is advancing rapidly, and big players are investing huge amounts of money, then there is no way to prevent it from becoming a learning organization.
So they often launch the first wave of agile teams, collect data on the value teams have created and the constraints they face, and decide if, when, and how to take the next step. This allows them to weigh the value of increasing agility against costs.
If the benefits outweigh the costs, leaders continue to scale up agile practices. Deploying another wave of teams, unlocking constraints in less agile parts of the organization, and repeating the cycle.
They can take a break, monitor the market, and explore ways to increase the value of established agile teams and lower switching costs.
7 important steps to scale your Business Startup
1. Have a good business model
The first step to successfully scale your startup is to have a good business model. For this, a series of principles need to be analyzed by the entrepreneur for the business to function.
These and other questions are fundamental to understanding if the startup needs to change to be able to be scalable.
2. Understand the market
To scale your startup, you need to understand your target audience, pains, interests, and desires so that you can deliver a good value proposition. The Business Model Canvas can help define these questions.
For this, it is possible to conduct market research and even talk to potential customers to better understand their needs.
3. Structure your team
To be able to scale your startup, you need a qualified and well-organized team. For this, it is important that employees have a cultural fit with the company and that their daily work ensures their motivation.
Having a good working method is also necessary to ensure the team’s efficiency. Also, people must believe in that dream just as you do.
Also, being able to count on co-founders can be a fundamental part, as each one can contribute with a different vision of the business and, together, it is possible to see beyond.
4. Invest in preparation
To achieve your goal, it’s important to have a well-established plan. That’s why it’s essential to be clear about what needs to be done to scale your startup.
It is recommended to establish short and long-term plans and know how to plan in stages because if any investor or potential investor gets in touch. It is necessary to know how to explain to them what the company’s next step is.
Planning can also be important for developing good processes, which are tested, established, and replicated.
5. Perform tests to scale
The tests allow identifying possible failures in products/services, processes, and/or areas of the company. A very common mistake of entrepreneurs is to believe in the idea that their product/service is good without actually proving it.
Thus, performing tests is essential to understand if all the investment of time, money, and other resources will be worth it and will make it possible to scale your startup.
Therefore, research with customers, suppliers, develop a minimum viable product, among others, until you find the market fit.
6. Organize finances
One of the ways to scale your startup is through investments. Investors and financial institutions usually assess the financial and accounting organization of startups before granting credit to the business.
So having all this information organized can be very important.
7. Understand the importance of the investor
When scaling your startup, the investor can play a key role. In addition to the capital invested, it can pass on knowledge to the business, have relevant networking for the business, and help position the product/service in the market.
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