What You Need To Know About Scaling Your Startup

Launching your startup is a challenge on its own. But, once you have managed to get through the difficult “conception” period, a new challenge awaits: You will have to work on your strategy for scaling. I say you need a “strategy” because a poorly planned scaling strategy is often the start of the downfall of a startup. It is, in fact, one of the most common reasons why startups fail. Especially those that had a successful early period and could scale earlier than planned.

Premature scaling

One of the common pitfalls you need to avoid is scaling before you are ready to do so. In other words, scaling before you’re fully prepared. Why should you start scaling when you’re still making consistent sales? Because of all the benefits of having an exponential growth curve. For one, your product should be scalable from the beginning. This means that, even if you can’t grow your base by hundreds of percent over a short period of time, you should be able to make that happen within a reasonable timeframe. It’s important to note, however, that this doesn’t mean your product should grow exponentially over the course of a few weeks. It is fine if your product is currently five percent larger than it was when you launched.

What to do when faced with a scaling dilemma

There are several potential ways to tackle this scaling dilemma: Reduce costs by relocating location of physical office: Given the growing need for mobile apps, many early stage startups opt to put their software development in one location, and leverage a more affordable team and infrastructure to continue their work remotely. Alternatively, you could move your physical office to another location and cut costs by renting office space in that location. Increase revenue by selling an additional subscription product: If you’re still a relatively small startup, look at selling additional products to bring in revenue before expanding to the next level. Think about products that your target audience may find appealing and offer discounts and coupons in exchange for a subscription.

How to scale successfully

Here’s a look at how to scale your startup by ensuring that you’re setting yourself up for the right success. Prioritize business success first and foremost, you need to ensure that you’re not delving too deep into trying to scale the wrong things. Before you invest time and money in things that aren’t of core importance to your business, it’s important that you test the waters first. Before making major changes, or scaling a certain thing, make sure to assess your viability and test the waters with a small initial test group, or even one other business. For example, a home-based fitness business might be looking to scale their client list. So to do this, they’d look to extend their reach to fitness clubs to see if they can grow that customer base for them.

Conclusion

Many entrepreneurs claim their business ‘just got better.’ To put this claim in context, they’re probably talking about scaling. Your business could be improving in other ways, but you’ll need to move on to building and scaling your business, if you want to see significant growth.