Strategies for Scaling Your Startup

By Cameron Burningham

When creating a startup, the primary focus is often on achieving initial success, and the subsequent steps for scaling the business may not be given enough consideration. It is crucial however to consider how to continue moving forward with your business. This might be a very different experience from the initial launching of your business and can feel overwhelming without a solid place to start. Here are just a few strategies to get you started on scaling your startup successfully.

Analyzing your business model
The first and most important step to advance your startup is to look at your current business model ensuring it will continue to be viable during growth. Some aspects might need to be tweaked or changed all together to keep up with your increasing clients or customers such as outsourcing manufacturing. This could also include investing in back end software to improve the operation or collaboration between employees. The last thing you want to happen is one avenue of your business bottlenecking the growth of your company.

Securing Funding for Your Period of Growth
Expansion will often require a larger up front investment to increase your return in the future. Start by breaking down the changes and additions you will need to make to understand exactly how much it will really cost. Once you understand the financial backing needed, you will be better equipped to find the appropriate funding that will be best for you. The overall cost will determine the best source of funding whether that is looking for business loans or taking on new investors.

Building a Strong Team Around you
As your business grows you will also have more responsibilities and items that need your attention. It is essential that you surround yourself with others who align with your ambitions and are willing to help you through this process of building. Distributing some of the smaller tasks to others allows you more time to focus on the larger aspects that need your personal attention.

Take Inventory of your businesses strengths
It is very rare that all of a company’s services produce at a high level and spreading yourself too thin could lead to unsuccessful scaling. You should look at key performance indicators such as a product’s sales or media interaction and put your effort into growing the aspects that have the best performance and most demand for growth. Allocate resources to the areas that will have the largest return first to avoid growing pains and excessive financial burden.

Account for legal and compliance considerations
Expanding a company to new regions or markets comes with new rules as laws can change from state to state or in different areas of business. Before you start you should always research what may be different and what changes need to be made within your current operations. This could mean finding new distributors or acquiring new licenses to conduct your business.

Understanding Mistakes Will Happen
Growing pains are a part of the process and you will hit bumps in the road. It is impossible to account for everything that will happen as scaling a business is a dynamic process filled with uncertainty. The important part is learning from what succeeds and what goes wrong to continue moving forward and improving. Over time your understanding will grow and you will be better equipped to take care of similar issues in the future.

This is never an easy process, but with a forward-thinking mindset, adaptability, and a commitment to learning from experiences you will find success. As you embark on the journey of scaling your startup, remember that each obstacle is a stepping stone toward a stronger and more successful future.