“Great talent is hard to recruit, and new recruits are hard to train.” While most startup leaders spend years building a cohesive corporate culture, you need to be sure it doesn’t slip away. If your company is still in the early stages and you are only able to assume functional roles, it would be a fatal mistake to think that you can do this indefinitely.
The research found that 74% of fast-growing Internet startups fail due to premature scaling, and 93% of startups grow but never cross the $100k-a-month revenue threshold. Data shows that 70% of tech start-ups fail in their 20th month of initial funding. In the absence of financial assistance, companies cannot sustain their own growth and go bankrupt.
Startups need a team that believes in the vision of the founders and is willing to do even more to ensure the success of the company. A startup team must have the ability to change the product, adjust different compensation plans, pursue new marketing approaches, relocate industries, rename the company, and tear it down from the start.
With so many moving pieces, rapid change, and new people scaling, the right leader is critical to success. Before you start scaling, it’s a good idea to look at the most common reasons why startups fail and how to avoid them.
Founders Failed to Get the Right Team
Making sure your company works as a team is a core principle that will make you successful, and the key is to organize. The balance between what you can create with your small team of great people is part of the magic of an excellent start-up and happens naturally.
One of the key reasons CEOs and executives of fast-growing companies struggle and fail is that they attempt to do too much at once. Startups with bold, big, bold ideas have so many ways to succeed.
Not up to Customers’ Needs while Producing the Product
Another reason for company failure is the failure to develop a product that meets the market’s needs. This can be a strategic problem or a failure to make the product/market fit. A major reason they fail is that they have problems with their small to no market for the product they are building.
In the worst case, the product is far from the base and a complete rethink is required. There is no point in hiring a lot of sales and marketing staff if the company is refining the product to meet the needs of the market.
Not Scaling Customer Services
Your sales team needs to grow with your business and you must keep up with the growing demand for customer service as your business grows. Customer experience is one of the key factors for success on a scale, and chances are you will end up with angry customers.
Even after you have added new customers, you may lack the resources to meet their needs quickly and efficiently. The most commonly accepted new customers can be those for whom you lack the resources to meet all their needs.
No Budget and Lack of Funds
Monetization is key to the success of any start-up, but it should not overshadow problem-solving. We have to spend money to make money, but we should not spend so much money that our company and our employees are at risk if we do something wrong.
Ineffective Business Operations
As you grow in size, you’ll need to become more structured. Working fast and loose was excellent for your small group of superstars, but it won’t work with a larger group. The requirement to keep organized grows as your ranks rise and positions that were previously filled by individuals become teams of people.
Too Much Scaling or Pre-mature Scaling
One of the most common mistakes companies make in the start-up phase is that they scale too much. As soon as a start-up demonstrates a concept, establishes itself, and enters the market, it needs the means to scale and grow. For a fast-growing start-up or a medium-sized company, scale-up can be a challenge.
Scaling up too quickly is one of the most typical mistakes made by businesses in the early stages of development. They assume they have already established their market-fit after acquiring one or two clients.
According to the survey, 74 percent of internet start-ups fail due to premature scaling, whereas those that scale properly enjoy growth 20 times quicker.
Failed to Raise New Capital
The main reason for failure for the firms on our list was a lack of capital, which was coupled with an inability to get financing/investor interest.
When people build a team, growing people are critical to a company’s success. If other startups have products that meet the needs they cannot ignore, they will grow faster, and they will recover from the start-up phase. Growth start-ups and scale-ups have tangible evidence that people want what they have to offer, and that’s what attracts venture capital.
Not Being Agile
Strategic action plans are necessary for achieving your vision, but they are not infallible. Iteration can be aided by a solid IT infrastructure and communication system. The greatest strategy to achieve agility is to make modest, everyday, incremental adjustments that are aligned with your company’s long-term vision and contribute to your most significant KPIs.
What makes a Start-up Successful?
There are many factors that can prevent a start-up from scaling, from infighting between founders to the inability to build a solid and talented team, to a product that does not meet the exact needs of the market.
- Renewing your approach to core values will help you recruit the greatest staff, obtain the best technologies for analyzing and managing financial data, and define precisely how to continue to scale.
- Before you put a significant amount of time, effort, and money into a concept, talk to clients, test your assumptions, and discover a market.
- Build your start-up to scale so that business processes, technology, customer service, and human resources all grow at the same time to meet the company’s growing demands.
- Process management is an investment. Make sure processes are recorded so that others can take them up without being demonstrated step-by-step.
- Create a prototype to quickly and inexpensively test the market. Iterate frequently.
- Get help keeping track of your finances, and make decisions based on more than simply sales numbers.
Final Thoughts
The most challenging part of gaining success in the startup sector is putting your company on a course that maximizes its chances of not only surviving but also rapidly growing. This implies that you should have a solid expansion strategy in place.
Remember that no growth approach is 100% perfect. No startup growth plan is carved in stone, and if you aren’t achieving the outcomes you want, you may adjust it. Above all, it’s critical to be adaptable and willing to recognize mistakes, swiftly learn from them, and move on to new strategies and ideas without focusing on past missteps on the difficult road to success as a modern company. Upstack will help you build the best team to start your successful journey!!
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Originally published at Upstack.co on Dec 13, 2021, by Sheetal Munjal.
