How to scale your startup?

Introduction

Scaling a startup is like a game of Jenga, the wooden game where players take turns removing blocks from a tower without toppling it. Only instead of trying not to lose, you’re trying not to fall behind your competition.

The goal is simple: Imagine yourself as the CEO of your company in 2020. You want to be able to look back on what you’ve built and know that it’s been built with quality materials so that it will stand the test of time—not just now but long into the future.

As a founder or CEO, there are things you can do now to help ensure that your business will successfully scale up over time for years to come.

Start planting the seed for an exit

A lot of startups fail because they don’t have a plan for an exit. Early on, you might be too busy to think about it, but eventually you need to plant the seed for an exit and start thinking about what that will look like.

If you want to sell your company in five years, then every year from now until then should be devoted toward getting some saleable assets ready. You need to focus on how much money can be made through growing revenue and reducing costs, while also positioning yourself as a valuable acquisition target by building out key features and scaling up customer acquisition channels. This is why the best time to set the stage for an exit is right after launch: it gives your business more than enough runway before having any significant financial pressure (or pressure from investors), while still keeping ahead of its competitors who are unlikely willing to do so at that stage in their business’s life cycle (if they even have one yet).

Stay true to your vision

As you grow, it’s easy to lose sight of the reason you started your business. It’s also easy to forget what made you different from the competition in the first place. But if you want your business to scale successfully, don’t let either happen!

If your company changes its focus or vision at any point in its life cycle, that can spell trouble for both customers and employees: if they no longer believe in what they’re selling (or stop believing in who they are), why should customers? And if employees don’t feel like their values align with those of their employer (or lack thereof), why should they keep working there?

You’ll need some sort of strategy for keeping yourself on track during growth—some sort of way to make sure that as your company expands geographically or otherwise gets bigger than ever before, it doesn’t lose sight of its roots or compromise its fundamental principles along the way.

Don’t fall in love with your product

You need to focus on getting your product to market. It’s important to be sure that what you’ve built will actually work, but once you’re confident of that, don’t get hung up on the details. Don’t be afraid to change your product or pivot in order to make it more useful or help it sell better. And don’t worry about failure—fail fast and move on. You can always try again later with a new idea if this one doesn’t pan out!

Set aggressive goals

To be successful, you have to set goals that are aggressive. You should aim for the moon and then figure out how to get there after your feet leave the ground.

When setting goals, make sure they’re:

Difficult but achievable—the point of setting goals is to accomplish something challenging.

Measurable—if it can’t be measured, you don’t know if you’ve hit them or not.

Specific—don’t just say “we’ll scale!”; say what exactly will happen when you do scale (e.g., we’ll acquire more users).

Timebound—you need an end in mind when looking at your growth strategy. It’s easy for momentum to stop if there isn’t a deadline for completion by which time things have to happen in order to meet this goal or objective of yours.”

Use the data you have

Use the data you have.

Build new features based on what’s already working in your business.

Use data to make decisions and measure success, but don’t let it dictate everything.

Change the game and change it early

If you are not growing, you are dying. In order to grow, you need to be able to change direction quickly and make adjustments on the fly. If you aren’t changing, then your competitors will get ahead of you by doing so instead of watching from the sidelines as they eat your lunch.

If your business model isn’t working out or if customers aren’t responding well enough for it to be profitable for everyone involved (including the company itself), then it’s time for something new—and soon! A startup that doesn’t evolve with its audience will disappear quickly; don’t let this happen to yours!

Prepare for battle and never underestimate your competition

To truly scale your startup, you need to prepare for battle and never underestimate your competition. Here are some ways to do that:

Know their strengths and weaknesses. You can’t defeat your competitors if you don’t know who they are, where they stand in the market, what products or services they offer, and how well those offerings match up against yours. Competitors might have more funds than you do at this stage; they might be better known in the industry; they might have a superior product or service—or all three! Understanding these things will help guide your strategy as well as give direction regarding which areas of business require more time and attention than others.

Know their customers/ clients/ users/ community members/ etc., including demographics (age group), behavior patterns (what makes them tick), purchasing habits (how much money do they spend per year on other items?), location information (where do they live?). This should include qualitative data such as surveys or interviews as well  as quantitative data such as number of Facebook followers versus number of Twitter followers vs Instagram followers vs Pinterest followers etc). The more information we have about potential customers the better chance we have at predicting how many sales we can make within a marketplace before going live with our own website launch date announcement campaign!

Create a strategy for scaling your company online

It’s important to have a strategy for scaling your company online. Here are some tips on how to create a strategy for scaling your company online:

Social media: You should use social media to share news about the product or service you offer, as well as engage with your audience and connect with influencers who can spread the word about your brand. It’s also a good idea to post photos of people using/testing out your product or service—people love seeing that stuff!

Content marketing: Creating blog posts that address common questions about the topic you specialize in will help you attract new customers. If there aren’t any blogs out there specifically addressing that issue yet (which probably isn’t true), then make sure yours is high quality so people will want to read it!

SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about getting traffic from search engines like Google so they show up in their results when someone searches for something related to what they do (like “dog groomers near me”). That way people find them without having heard anything else before hand which means fewer costs spent advertising through traditional channels like television commercials or radio ads where companies pay big bucks just so consumers know what they actually do.”

Nail down your sales strategy

You will want to make sure that sales are a top priority in your startup by creating a sales strategy that works for your business. This includes defining the roles of your sales team and the process they should follow when interacting with prospects, as well as getting started with actual sales calls. You can do so by using tools like Salesforce, which allows you to manage all aspects of marketing and selling products or services through one place.

Focus on hiring, training and retaining employees that can move fast and execute quickly

Hire the right people.

Train them well, and motivate them to execute quickly.

Make sure they have access to training courses, are equipped with the right tools and have a positive attitude toward their work. Make sure they work well together as a team and that their skills complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses in order to perform at peak performance levels.

Scaling a startup is rarely as easy as simply adding more people, but there are some tips that can help make it easier while keeping you focused on your original vision along the way

Scaling a startup is rarely as easy as simply adding more people, but there are some tips that can help make it easier while keeping you focused on your original vision along the way.

The first step to scaling your startup is making sure you have a clear vision of what success looks like. This includes defining how much money you need, who will be involved and what roles they’ll play in achieving that goal. Once you have this in place, it’s time to get started! Here are some tips for getting started with scaling:

Be prepared to make changes as you go. Scaling is not linear; things will happen unexpectedly and often change at lightning speed so be ready for anything!

Don’t be afraid to pivot if necessary. Sometimes even when everything seems perfect, things change so quickly that pivoting may become necessary—don’t fight against this process but embrace it instead!

Don’t be afraid to change your vision if necessary either; sometimes changing one thing means having many other things fall into place automatically without any effort from us at all (like when we changed our app name from “Sketchup” with no other changes).

Conclusion

To sum up, scaling a startup can be tough. But if you follow these tips and make sure to stay true to your vision while growing your company, you’ll be able to scale it into something great!