The digital transformation of business is taking off, and so are startup growth problems. There’s a new generation of startups that are only getting started, and they’re getting more difficult to manage.
That’s why many startups fail in the first five years whether it’s from unexpected growth or slow businesses means that you fail to bring in more customers. In that case, you’ll only lose more money before profiting from your business.
There are several tips to avoid bankruptcy when you have sudden growth in your business. This article explains the five top tips for handling unexpected startup growth — when your company becomes the target of a large, sophisticated storm — and how you can prepare for it instead of responding with panic and uncertainty.
We’ll also share tools and tricks that will help you handle the unprecedented growth in your organization while also making sure your customers are getting what they want.
The Risks of Rapid Growth
One of the most common startups that grow at a rapid rate is an app development company. These businesses are often early-stage companies with little capital or marketing experience. However, these companies also happen to have excellent businesses that have developed strong brands and strong customer relationships.
These companies grow at a breakneck pace, and even though they have a plan for taking it to the next level, they don’t have a plan for how to grow their businesses at the same time. To be successful in this fast-moving world, your company must be prepared to handle sudden, major, and rapid growth.
Such growth is difficult to predict, manage, and parallelize. It can even go overboard in some cases, as in the case of Facebook’s huge growth during the 2016 election cycle. Your company must be prepared to handle this quickly and with some thoughtfulness.
5 Strategies to Manage Unexpected Startup Growth
The idea of sudden, major, and rapid growth often comes from a sidekick of creating a large, unique, and new business. But what’s more unexpected is the growth that follows.
The best thing is that you have a large, robust business that seamlessly transitions from one stage of growth to the next. However, in the worst-case scenario, your company experiences sudden, major, and rapid growth.
What should you do if your business experiences rapid growth? Here are five things you need to look out for:
1. Make a business growth strategy
If you’re starting out as a company and your revenue isn’t growing, it’s very likely that you’re facing an early-stage business growth problem. The first step is to have a business growth strategy. You’re likely to experience sudden, major, and rapid growth if your revenue is above $100,000 per year.
You can either increase your revenue proportionally or divert some of your marketing budget into growing your business. Once you’ve identified your growth issues, you can develop a business growth strategy that will help you deal with these situations and prepare for the inevitable growth.
2. Concept development and testing
When you’re working with customers, there’s a danger of making unworkable, over-designed, and unappealing designs. If your customers have a tendency to cycle through multiple stages of growth, you’ll have a hard time managing this, and you may end up with a business that’s too expensive to operate.
This is why focusing on marketing and brand building is crucial. As the number of customers grows, so does the need for new branding and marketing efforts. Fortunately, business strategies that focus on growth are often quite conservative.
A high-growth startup needs the right marketing strategy that is aggressive enough to change business strategies mid-way through the growth process. For example, if you’re doing social media campaigns, consider using TikTok advertising to promote your latest products.
3. Pay attention to back-end support systems
You will experience rapid growth when your revenue reaches over $100,000 per year. You should then diversify your revenue to the right divisions that need a lot of care, such as Research and Development (RnD), Fulfillment Warehouse, Delivery, etc.
If you’re doing this the wrong way, which is focusing on unnecessary things, you may end up with a business that’s too expensive to run. To avoid this scenario, you need to focus on the back-end support systems like the aforementioned. Or, pay attention to units that are the critical processes to make your business run smoothly, such as hiring employees, paying for benefits, and accounting.
4. Subtract deadweight customers
This is the largest challenge that companies experience. You can either make less money or have more money in your business while being subtracted from the revenue stream. In the best-case scenario, you will have fewer deadweight customers than if you make more money and have more revenue. On the other hand, the biggest challenge with this is that you will need to establish your customer base and build a product that will serve them. It will be very challenging to do this the old-fashioned way.
5. Control cost and debt
When you’re facing unexpected startup growth, make sure to focus on control of cost and debt. This will help you to avoid being subtracted from the revenue stream and will help your business to be more stable.
For example, if you have an expected growth rate of 10% per year, you should consider your cost of goods to be 10% in order to avoid going over budget. Additionally, make sure to control your own debt and not fall into too much debt with too little money to work with. This will help you to have more stability and avoid a number of problems that can come with too much money.
5 Tools to Help You Manage Startups Effectively
When running a new startup, make sure to use these tools to help you manage your business.
1. Email marketing tools
Email marketing tools are one of the most important software you should have to help you get your business in front of as many people as possible. They help you get name-brand customers and can help you to measure the success of your startup.
2. Social media tools
Social media tools can help you get in front of more people with social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. They can also help you to measure the success of your startup.
3. Pitching tools
Pitching tools help you to get people interested in your product or service. They help you to identify what needs to be said in order to get people interested in your product or service.
4. Automated marketing campaign tools
Automated marketing campaign platforms help you to create targeted marketing campaigns that will reach potential customers. They help you to generate leads and sales quickly.
5. Sales processes
Sales processes help you to create a sales process that will make it easy for customers to find your product or service. They help you to set up sales routes and manage sales teams.
Conclusion
Startup growth can be seen like two-sided knives. One thing is that you have more revenue potential with a number of customers, and it is another thing that you have to make sure you are doing everything you can to not be overwhelmed with sudden growth.
Unexpected startup growth can go wrong because you don’t have control over your cost and debt, but also because you don’t have knowledge about what to expect and what isn’t prioritized into something more than it is. The key to success is to make sure you’re using the right tools and that you’re doing everything you can to keep your startup stable and sustainable.
