Navigating Growth: The Scaleup Challenge for Startups

Starting a business is easy, but getting a venture to a state where it can trade successfully, on a profitable sustainable basis is difficult. Even after taking in rounds of investment, haveing a venture you can IPO or sell, the toughest task for anyone. 

For the leadership team to take an idea to a fully fledged trading business is one of the most difficult things anyone can do. The next challenge, is scaling it.  The broad thinking now is that for a business to be that scalesup, to continue to grow successfully, need assistance with the five following areas;

1. Access to talent and skills. Finding and recruiting the employees to hire who have the skills they need to scale, as compared to starting. Of course, you have the other issue of retaining those staff is what has now become a hyper competitive labour market.
2. Getting into new markets. You may have cracked your home market, or a small cross section of an export market, but how do you scale this with any meaning and within a budget.
3. Leadership capacity. To scale your business, you need a different type of leadership and expertise across the organisation. Finding those skills and integrating them into the entrepreneurial culture is challenging.
4. Funding. To scale to any level you require significant funding, and it needs to be of the right type. The next round of funders needs to be smart, and add more than just financial capital, they should where possible bring human capital too. Know-how, global connections, experience of growing a business.
5. Infrastructure. The stringed together infrastructure you can start a business with, will likely not suffice as you scale to a 24×7 operation serving clients across the globe. This will also include a change in premises, space, warehousing as well as your tech infrastructure.

At XPinnovates we work with startups and scaleups to understand the growth challenges ahead, and work closely with the leadership team and investors to maximise shareholder value.

If you need help assessing your current strategic position, navigating what and how to go next, then contact us today.