5 tips to better manage your startup’s growth

While many experts analyze the stages of a startup’s life cycle, one thing is certain: after the launch phase and before the startup matures, comes the growth and development phase. During this phase, your company will establish its place in the industry.

Indeed, even if all stages of the startup life cycle have their own challenges and opportunities, the “growth” phases are essential to the success of a young company.

Growth as a discipline in itself is relatively new. In recent years we have seen the birth of a marketing discipline. In which we ask these growing startups not necessarily to come up with crazy solutions. Never-before-done solutions to acquire customers, but rather to stay customer-centric and make smaller decisions in parallel.

Excerpt from Mercredi Startup on the theme: Managing the growth of your startup: Beth Thouin, marketing specialist and mentor at the Founder Institute and Techstars AI in Montreal.

How to recognize when your company is entering a growth phase?

This is the point where you have validated your market: your product is desirable, technically feasible and financially viable. This inevitably involves implementing an innovative marketing and sales strategy.

Read also: What is a successful change leader?

Our tips for getting through this growth phase:

1. Develop a growth strategy.
First, consider developing a growth strategy that will help you understand the challenges and opportunities for your business. This strategy is the result of not only a thorough diagnosis of internal resources, the market, the competition, but also marketing channels.

2. Strengthen your teams.
In a growth phase, your team must be more competent and respond to identified needs. In addition, building a solid team of reliable and competent employees and managers becomes essential.

It is fundamental in a hyper-growth phase that the internal culture is clearly established with well-defined values and communicated to the entire team. This is rarely thought of when it comes to growth and sales, but the company’s values and culture are an invaluable asset in supporting this growth.

Excerpt from Mercredi Startup on the theme: Managing the growth of your startup: Alexis Bourson, General Manager, Product & Strategy at Videotron Affaires and Fibre Noire.

3. Put robust processes in place.
As companies in the growth phase move to the next level. It becomes essential to have structured systems in place to ensure quality control and complete projects on time. You are advised to leverage Data to improve UX, while acquiring new users.

Startups that develop in the right way grow twenty times faster than those that do not.

Bonjour Startup Montréal

4. Don’t miss out on a marketing strategy.
To accelerate your growth, use marketing to gain visibility and channels to get your message out clearly and quickly. Your strategy will help you select and attract qualified leads, while improving your conversion rate to customers.

Read also: Culture of innovation: 6 key steps towards change!

5. Be aware of the risks.
Finally, the growth phase is about accepting that your startup will change every 3 months. That business models will change, and it is important to prepare for this change and the uncertainty that comes with it.

To conclude, think about developing a startup that is open, scalable and constantly improving. Don’t try to solve all of the customers’ problems at once. Instead, develop a strategy and plan that demonstrates continuous innovation and leads to complementary long-term solutions.

If you missed it, don’t worry, it’s available online here.