1

New Venture
2

Early Growth
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Rapid Growth
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Continuous Growth

Find a Viable Business Model

  • Identify and understand customers’ most important problem or need.
  • Define and develop a product or service that solves the problem or fulfills the need.
  • Verify that customers will pay for your product and that the revenue generated will result in a profitable business model.
  • Determine that the market has a high enough growth potential to support the business over time.
  • Develop a repeatable and scalable sales process by learning how to sell to a small set of early customers.

Create Customers & Drive Sales

  • Now that the market has been found, it’s time to mine it.
  • Begin to ramp-up sales and marketing efforts.
  • Prove broader market acceptance of your product or service by attracting and selling to a larger base of customers.
  • Develop basic operations and initial infrastructure, add key resources, and hire enough people to support a growing customer base.
  • Gain visibility and credibility by winning a set of satisfied early “reference” customers to help attract additional customers.

Scale the Company

  • Achieve widespread use of the company’s products or services and create a solid market position.
  • Scale up operations and build the organizational infrastructure necessary to support increasing growth and complexity.
  • Build a strong management team, one that can scale and grow the company.
  • Develop a full-scale sales and marketing effort.
  • Fill the gaps in the company’s functional expertise and experience.
  • Recruit, hire, train, and manage many new people.
  • Acquire and manage the financial, human, technical, physical, and other resources needed to grow.
  • Scale without losing the very qualities that made the business successful in the first place.

 

Become a Market Leader

  • Develop a strategic plan for locating new growth opportunities while the existing business is still growing.
  • Transform exiting markets, expand to new markets, develop new products, and create new businesses.
  • Stimulate and support entrepreneurship as a mindset and cultural component throughout the organization.
  • Make the operational and organizational changes necessary to meet the requirements of ever-higher levels of growth and success.
  • Continuously look for signs the business model needs changing, such as competitive threats, new technologies, and changing customer needs.
  • Develop the senior management team as both operational leaders of their functional areas and strategic leaders of the company.
  • Attract, hire, and develop the talent required to run and grow the business.
  • Maintain the right balance between the systems and controls needed to effectively manage the business and the flexibility necessary for entrepreneurial activity and growth.