FIVE PRINCIPLES OF “SCALING UP A START-UP”

Start-ups are darlings of media and investors at the moment.  While many attract huge valuations and grab headlines, many of them bite dust or fade away.  Hoping you have built a start-up, how well it grows depends upon adopting few fundamental scalability principles.

First principle is checking the fundamentals. Validate your product/service is robust, and customer segments are there to encash.  Evaluate whether you have ironed out market fitment, you are relevant to customers segments that are likely to grow and spend. Finally, you have resources in terms of people and infrastructure to support the growth.

Second principle is to formalize process, and the culture you want the organization. Template and automate the surround process.  Detail the culture and align everybody in your current organization to own and drive the initiatives.  Identify and handover the management to entrepreneurs within the organization. Automate or outsource HR and related process. They save a lot of your time and energy.  Create process and systems for an organization 10X times than what you are, not to meet current requirements.

Third principle is to charge marketing. Bring in high voltage less investment drives, right from campus drives, free rides on techcrunch or IEEE or respected incubation platforms. See if you can ride on the ecosystem of OEM’s, educational institutions, HNI’s and angels.  More free vehicles better it is.

Fourth, keep your sales engine simple and stupid. Hire for their attitude than double degree MBA’s.  Bring in a centralized sales operations role that reviews and drives sale to success. Define incentives that are idiot proof.

Finally, but most critical is evaluate well prepared is the organization for your absence. Are there enough people who loose their sleep if delivery are not met or client meetings are missed.

Unlike what mercenary VC’s think, scalability is all about creating a homogenous unit. Scalability is all about creating an entity that breathes and lives a vision, follows common system and process, people and plans.

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