Are you a Startup or a Scaleup?
What is the difference between a Startup and Scaleup?
A Startup is where a founder and small team are looking for product-market fit. They are running a series of experiments to help discover Product-Market Fit and to refine and pivot based on the results of those experiments.
Once they have determined and validated that they have found Product-Market Fit, they need to change mode into a Scaleup. The company now needs to execute the delivery of the product (often a Minimal Viable Product), so needs to scale to rapidly build a team with the capability to deliver the product to make the most of the opportunity.
What are the challenges of transitioning from a Startup to a Scaleup?
As a Startup, the founder and the team are wearing multiple hats doing whatever it takes to conduct the experiments. But this mode of working and team structure (or lack of) does not scale - adding more members to the team will most likely slow the other team members down and lead to chaos.
As a Scaleup, the team needs to move from running experiments to focused delivery. And there is a need for team members with a depth of knowledge to focus on specific areas, but also ensure that things don't fall through the cracks. So a clearer definition of roles and responsibilities is required.
Also, as a Startup, experiments are cheap, and the impact of failed experiments is not significant, meaning multiple experiments in search of Product-Market Fit can be run. But as a Scaleup, bringing a product(s) to market, the level of risk goes up significantly, not only in terms of money but also in terms of successfully launching the product (and subsequent product updates and launches), which if it doesn't go well, it can leave a black mark on the company and damage the brand.
How does a Scaleup mitigate those risks?
So how do we clearly define roles and responsibilities and ensure that we are minimising risk to the launch of our new product? This is where processes and systems, along with quality control, become essential.
The fact is product development is difficult and complex, managing the different aspects of it running in parallel to get a quality product to market on time. If it were easy, then we wouldn't hear and see product and company failures - https://www.google.com/search?q=failed+products
There are many best-practices out there that can be used: stage-gate, agile/scrum, design thinking, lean, etc. But which one? While these best-practices are good in specific situations (industry, technology, company size/maturity, etc) at the different points in the product development lifecycle, there is no one “silver bullet". And it takes time for an organisation to be able to learn and build experience in the specific best-practice(s) and make it part of the culture. And to make it worse, you still need to deliver the product at the same time.
What help is available?
While there are books and training courses available in various best-practices, what is missing is how to pull the best parts from the best-practices, bring them together into an integrated process to meet the specific needs of your company, at the different points as the company transitions from Startup to Scaleup (and beyond). Then there is a kaleidoscope of different tools that you can use - do not be fooled into thinking that implementing a new tool is going to magically make these best-practices become reality and solve your problems.
Unfortunately, this is where more often than not companies get stuck and end up in a situation where nothing seems to “work as advertised”. This is where I found myself when I was given the responsibility in the company I was working for 16 years ago. It took a lot of time and effort to improve the situation. The positive thing that came out of it is when I had to do it in the next company I worked for, I was able to leverage those past mistakes and avoid them, only then to hit some other issues. But overtime with each company I have been tasked with this, I have got better and better at it. It has now become my fulltime gig working with a range of companies (rather than list them here, refer to my LinkedIn profile - about 20 companies over the last 16 years) having a positive impact on them.
The last point I’d like to make it that for your company, it will be a journey - you can't stop the organisation, make the changes, flick a switch and then instantly everything is fixed. It needs to focus on delivering value where and when it is required in order to unlock the capability in the organisation, while at the same time, meeting delivery commitments.
If you would like to have a chat about your company and where it is in its journey, feel free to reach out.
Cheers
David