Is Your Start-Up Poised for Long-Term Growth?

Here are three vital elements that can help your startup survive.

Over the past year, countless entrepreneurs have approached me personally in an attempt to pitch their idea for a new business. Additionally, I constantly review the deal flow that gets submitted to the Fundpire platform. And in the course of my career, I have probably thoroughly reviewed over 10,000+ business plans easily. While very few concepts for startups are viable, I find that most are merely one-off experiments. Perhaps you are thinking, “what is wrong with experimentation?” Of course, experiments are vital in advancing services and products in evolving markets. However, experimentation is also highly prone to failure. Most entrepreneurs only see their ideas. They have a difficult time getting past the startup phase and projecting themselves into the future so that they can envision their company as a fully mature corporation.

In my experience, there are three major elements that I’ve seen that can help a startup set the table for long-term growth:

Core Competency

A big mistake that startup companies make is not identifying their core competencies. At the inception of an idea, it is imperative to identify and evaluate all that your company and team have to offer. Are you missing an ancillary service that can potentially bring revenue or add value to the company? Is your product or service sustainable for a long game? Identifying your core competencies will give a company a solid foundation on which to build and scale.

The Structure

Building a company starts by setting up the right operational structure at the onset in order to scale. This is the rock-solid foundation and necessary framework of your business. The first step in defining the structure of your company is to create your organizational and flow charts. While these may seem archaic, they work. This will also help to start writing your company policies and procedures for each department.

Research and Development

Circling back to experimentation, it is important to re-invent and develop services and products that differentiate you from your competitors. As your company scales, pressure increases to meet new business demands, goals and targets. An efficient R&D department can be a major source of new growth and keeping a foot in the future. It can help companies to pioneer innovative products and new technologies and support internal improvements that increase productivity. It is important to recognize that an R&D department if well managed and maintained can provide sustained growth and market differentiation.

These are just a few elements that will poise a startup company for long-term growth and achieve sustainability in the marketplace.

© Gena Vazquez 2020