Start-up to scale-up

rganizations create products and/or services and reach one point. A sudden question pops up in the mind of the CXOs. Are we growing? Are we growing enough to get visibility? Why are new prospects asking us about our growth?

Stagnation Vs Growth

Customers watch you. Prospects research you. Stagnation in terms of revenue, head count, innovation etc. are all weighed by them in different ways. For someone, revenue is key and for some other, innovation may be key. But some parameter in your org must be going north, all the time.

Growing indicates stability to the external world. It shows your ability to be resilient to slow down. Your employees want to be part of a growing organization. So scaling up your organization is a must. And now is the time to act.

The Fuel

To grow you need some kind of fuel. Most people think about funding alone for growth. But growth can be achieved in many ways without getting funded.

Hiring extra ordinary talent is one key ingredient to scale up. You need to decide whether it is for the product building or for sales or for marketing.

Defining a specific goal to achieve scale is the first item. Scale may be to have international presence or to add an additional product line or to acquire another product. Ask yourself - what is that one thing that can help me scale, now? From time to time, the answer to this question varies. It may be just a product feature that may help you to scale.

Not shrinking is also very important

While you focus more on growth on one area, there may be areas where you may be losing. Watch out for those areas. A lot of software product companies failed to stabilize their bread winning products, while concentrating on newer ones. Losing the existing customers and trust is more dangerous than not getting new customers.

Pains while scaling up

1. Not able to spend time with existing customers
2. Instability in base products
3. Losing talent
4. Focus shift
5. Unusual burn rate that is not seen before

Scaling up the operations alone is not true scaling up. Even if every other aspects remain the same, but your customer trust has increased, still it is scaling up. The only difference is that the scale with which you measure the phrase scale-up!