Why is scaling up a tech start-up on of the hardest things for a technology firm to achieve?
On the one hand, there are qualities about being a smart, disruptive player that brings client value with a superior product offering which a bigger incumbent cannot match:
- Innovation
- Fast delivery
- High morale from employees excited to be changing things up
- Lack of red tape and formality, to go from idea to product delivery rapidly
- Founders involved in the day-to-day really have their finger on the pulse of every aspect of the business and know the teams well.
On the flipside, there can be obstacles to getting to the next level:
- Clients become less tolerant of outages and defects when they have put their trust in you by shifting their business to your start-up, so you are now a critical partner and thus more responsible than ever
- Ideas need to be carefully prioritised for value/growth as there will always be more work than there is capacity
- As the teams grow, founders are not able to have the same level of oversight and need to put in place leads and managers who can run things for them day-to-day so that founders can focus on the strategic side of the business, including technology architecture and the next big bets
- Investors want to see a steady upward trend of revenue growth and as a consequence, are not expecting to see you losing valuable clients or slowing revenue growth
The key is to unlock the culture and principles needed to scale up without losing the passion for building great products that clients love:
- A Product vision, roadmap and strategy alongside OKRs that are meaningful:
- Does everyone in the company know what problems are needing to be solved for clients and the business on this roadmap?
- The product roadmap has realistic deliveries that teams can commit to;
- As more clients come to use the products, bringing their needs and feedback to empowered product teams who have unfettered access to the clients;
- Steps to improve uptime, stability and platform scale, including real-time monitoring;
- A view of what processes, communications and ways of working together need to be adopted to focus on what problems are being solved in a way that everyone understands;
- Prioritisation of the book of work on a regular basis so that capacity is understood and people are working on the most important things with no ‘dark work’ being done behind the scenes.
We know these pressures from first-hand experience in tech startups and have expertise you won’t find with other external partners.
Why not talk to us?
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