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4 Definitive Ways To Grow Your Start-Up

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Something that sounds better than CEO is successful CEO. Starting up something of your own takes a lot of hard work and dedication, but to grow your start-up is the real challenge.

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If you are here, then you probably have achieved the first and basic step i.e. creating your presence in market. The next step is growth, where you adopt all sorts of strategies to enhance the face value of your start-up in the market.

Most of the time entrepreneurs fear to take a step ahead because it involves good amount of risk factor. The only thing you can put in the growth of your start-up is your hard work, dedication, and effort.

Start-Up

Establishing a successful business is never like a walk in the park. Neither it is sudden and rapid. When you work to grow your start-up, you will see the gradual changes in its growth patterns.

Not many of your fool-proof plans may work, neither will you see constancy. But, by working according to situations and by looking at your business with a perspective view, you can achieve success.

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You will be learning several lessons; you will face ups and downs. There is no fundamental sure shot plan which can be followed to grow your start-up. But, today, I, Tarundeep Singh, founder and co-founder of  Dealsshutter, will share my 4 definitive ways which I tried to grow my startup.

Traction and growth are two different things

When entrepreneurs are fresh in the business domain, they tend mistake traction for growth. These are two different phases and two different parts of the life-cycle of your business.

Both of these terms play different roles in your start-up. When you want to grow your start-up, you must know about your position and resources. You must be aware of the potential of your start-up at particular instant of time. After analyzing everything, you must move ahead with the process of growth.

As far as difference between these two terms is concerned, we are going to explore it now. When your business is in traction phase, the only goal should be to fit into the market or fit your product or services into the market. Your priority in this phase should be to allow the visitors and potential clients.

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Retention can be done later depending upon the quality of your product or service. Your main focus should be to make your product good enough in such a way that it becomes easy to grow your start-up. Once this process is done successfully, it will become easy for you to retain the users.

On the other hand, growth is about focusing on the things which are gathering the crowd around your business and making things work. In the growth phase, you must enhance the tools which are bringing in more crowds and converting your potential visitors into customers. You must ensure these four things when you are trying to grow your start-up:

Slow but continuous: It should be a continuous process without any pause or break. You must work continuously to ensure that your start-up is showing positive growth pattern. Does not matter if it is large or small, the graph must elevate slowly but continuously.

Well-equipped: When you are focusing on the growth of your business, you must make sure that you have capital and resources in sufficient amount. The process should not be kept at halt due to lack of these. If you are not sure, then wait for the right time. But, do not hurry up without having enough capital and human resources.

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Start saturation: Once you have decided and the growth process has taken-off, you must start working on your core areas. You must start saturating your business with the ideas which were your major highlights initially.

Introduce varieties: When you know that this growth process will not be hampered in between, start experimenting. Introduce varieties along with creativity in your service or products. It would be better if you provide diversion for your customers and clients alongside sticking to your core ideas.

The ultimate idea of knowing the difference between traction and growth is to understand the basic stages of your business. You must not get confused between these two. While traction will bring in more crowd, growth will enhance the methods which brings in more crowd. These two terms are interrelated but different.

Start-Up

Focus on productive elements

Yes, we understand that expansion and growth of your start-up is extremely important for you. We are just trying to make you realize that you must not leave behind the initial productive elements while gathering fresh strategies in your start-up.

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In a process to grow your start-up by pulling out more crowd towards your business, you must focus on the things which are working for you and also the things which are not working for you. This is majorly about finding a particular growth channel for your start-up. You must make sure that you spend your energy on the right one, so that it does not go in vain.

A good step in this process would be to look for the common threads because of which you got your topmost potential customers. This will indicate that where the strength and productive energy lies in your team. You must retain those human resources to continue the same form of growth in your start-up.

As a simple example, let us consider the top 15 customers of your company. You must notice a particular segment or team of your company which contributed to the initial growth. Concentrate on enhancing and improving their skills and knowledge rather than expanding the number in your team. We are suggesting you to just focus more on the strong pillars. This does not mean that you should not indulge new pillars for supporting the growth of your start-up.

In order to this properly, you must be very picky about what comes your way. Everything may seem interesting, productive, and smart, but not everything will grow your start-up effectively. It is a waste of time to spend your capital as well as energy on elements which do not align with the requirement of your client.

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The ultimate key to grow your start-up is satisfaction of your business. You do not really have a business if your clients and customers are not happy with you service or product. Given below are some of the tips you need to be aware of while focusing on the productive elements of your start-up:

Work with your vision: Remember that it is your start-up. Nobody is aware about your vision and mission as you are. Be intact with those goals and work for the betterment of your methodologies.

Speak out your goals: Not every team member of your start-up connects with you in exact form. You will have to convey your feelings, goals, and motives attached with that start-up. Organize sessions from time to time so that you get to speak out your plans with your team members and you must also try to know their ideas which can give your start-up the required momentum.

Analyze your employees: Every employee you hire for your start-up will bring both strength and weakness to your company. You must see whether it can be sorted by training the employee or they need to be eliminated. Do not hesitate to fire the employees who are not contributing to the needs and requirements of your business. This may make you a stiff person, but it will add to the growth of your start-up.

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Filter out the employees during recruitment: Hire people based on their practical knowledge, critical thinking, personality, and mental fitness. Sometimes when you hire an extremely qualified person, he may not necessarily have the capacity to think critically. In this situation, it will become impossible for the employee to solve the problems. Hence, recruitment process should be done effectively by keeping the above-mentioned qualities in mind.  

Start-Up

Give special attention to elements which slow down the process

While you are trying to grow your start-up there will be a set of tasks or processes that will slow down the process. As you are scaling up, the only focus should be on growth. Frame up a team that gives you deeper insights on such things which are holding back your start up from climbing the ladder of success. Try to outsource when building internal bulk will hamper the growth of your start-up.

In this context, it would be wise to suggest you to notice the clients also. Most of the times, there are clients which are trying to extract all the benefits from your company without giving much in return. You must draw a line beyond which you should not compromise with the progress of your start-up. Cut down such links which are trying to exploit you for their own benefit. Also, there may be products which you are offering consistently but they are not fetching much profit. If there is no sure shot way of modifying and making them more creative, then it is better to cut them down.

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A look at the wider scope of your business’ transactions may also reveal weaknesses in processes. By creating a clear and achievable supply chain vision statement, you can help visualize goals and not stray too far from them when going through these processes.

You can consider the case when Steve Jobs took over Apple. He focused more on what is slowing down the growth of company before focusing on those things which are supporting the growth. It would also be wise to cut down the things which have become old and contributing to decelerate the growth of your start-up. There are many such elements that will come to limelight when you try to explore the negative elements. Make sure you cut down on these to grow your start-up.

Prefer partnerships, if they are good

Many entrepreneurs prefer to work as a solo because sometimes partnership can land them into trouble. A healthy and strategic partnership will always help you to grow your start-up by ensuring a long-term benefit. We have seen the mergers of many renowned firms. This is not because either of them is facing loss or something similar. This is just to elevate the growth and expand the business. However, sharing the expenditure is always a wiser idea than planning to invest bulk for expansion.

As a simple example, we would like to present you the strategic step taken by Tamara Steffans, who was in charge of business development at Path. She cracked a deal with WordPress and managed to get a huge number of people who posted content on Path via WordPress. This is a simple way in which you can gain more visitors or higher conversion rates. The logic behind the partnership is very simple. When you sell your products through another well-established firm by integrating with them, you try to sell on a completely new and large platform. In this way, you get a whole bulk of new and potential audiences.

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The partnership also brings a revenue share between the two companies, which is extremely beneficial. Given below are some of the ideas which you must keep in mind before opting for partnerships or merger to grow your start-up.

The other firm must have similar interests as that of your company. Integrating with firms which have totally different goals will not help you to grow your start-up.

Make sure that customers of the other firm have interest in products or services which you will be offering to them. A partnership is useful only when you get more potential customers.

Make sure that you are growing from all aspects by indulging into partnerships. Your partner should not exploit your efforts and skills for their own benefit.

Track your business after partnership. If it is not showing the desired outcome, then it is certainly not the right option to grow your start-up.

After considering all the above facts and analysis to grow your start-up, we can derive the conclusion that it only requires strategic thinking and practical knowledge. Once you are aware of the things which are happening around in the market, you will know where to put your effort and capital. Do whatever it takes to grow your start-up, but make sure that you analyze the above mentioned parameters and facts before jumping onto a particular decision. 

4 Responses

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  2. Make sure that you are growing from all aspects by indulging into partnerships. Your partner should not exploit your efforts and skills for their own benefit.

  3. The other firm must have similar interests as that of your company. Integrating with firms which have totally different goals will not help you to grow your start-up.

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