6 Tips for Scaling Your Startup

If you’re a startup founder, it's important to look for opportunities for growing your enterprise in the long term. Scalability is a crucial factor for success. It indicates progress not just in revenue, but also in other factors like risk tolerance, productivity, and innovation.

Still, the challenge can be daunting. According to an article from Investopedia, startups had a failure rate of 90% in 2019. As a matter of fact, only a handful of startups can make it past their 10^th year of operation before going bust. 

From a lack of research to limited capital, there are various ways your startup can fail. This shouldn't discourage you from making the journey towards startup success. By focusing more on scalability, your startup is guaranteed to thrive past the 10-year mark. Here are a few tips you should keep in mind:

1. Review your business model

Before launching your startup, it's important that you spend time analyzing your business model and checking if it has the potential to support the sustained growth of your startup. The best way to approach this is to use a business model canvas or BMC. This allows you to visualize your startup's potential to scale and develop a unique identity.

Through a BMC, you get to identify key partnerships, revenue streams, cost structures, activities, resources, and other factors that will fuel future growth. Once you have completed your BMC, you can determine what works, plan for the long term, and minimize the risk of failure.

2. Find your key strengths

What does your startup have that other startups lack? Determining key strengths is crucial to know how your startup can compete against other enterprises in your market.

For this, don't just focus on filling up the gap between you and your competitors. Instead, concentrate on enhancing core products and activities. If there's anything you are doing right, look for ways to improve it. Don't rush into new projects just yet. Take time to build on the things that are gaining ground.

Understanding what makes your startup unique can help you focus on concepts that matter in terms of long-term growth. 

3. Make the most out of your workforce

Hiring more people doesn't necessarily accelerate the growth of your startup. It only makes core processes more complicated in addition to eating into the bottom line.

When recruiting people to your startup, don't focus too much on filling up empty seats and creating unnecessary positions. During the first months of launching your startup, you need to build a pioneering team that provides the skills and experience that coincide with your business's core activities.

You can reach out to business owners you know and ask for referrals. Also, consider posting job ads on social media platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn. In any case, it's important that you provide a clear description of the kind of employees you will want to hire.

The future of your startup depends heavily on the quality of your human capital. Consider coming up with a detailed profile of an ideal employee for your startup. That way, you won't have to waste time and resources on candidates who won't deliver long-term value.

4. Consider outsourcing

In case you lack the resources to recruit an in-house team, outsourcing would be the best option. Especially if you are operating as a sole proprietorship, hiring a remote worker is a cost-effective way to support your business's growth during the first few months of launching.

You can find freelancers who can handle a range of tasks that in-house employees can handle but at a cheaper cost. If you want to build a marketing campaign, for instance, you can hire independent contractors that have the creative and technical skills you need. Another option is to partner with a marketing agency. There are a number of outsourcing firms that provide teams for a flat rate.

Whether it's a freelancer or an offshore company, outsourcing provides your startup with an affordable way to access skills that are locally unavailable. This also allows you to offload repetitive tasks so you can focus on finding other growth opportunities. Plus, you get to save more money from hiring costs. You can use these savings to strengthen other aspects of your startup and open up new income streams.

5. Channel your resources towards innovation

Your startup has a better chance of success if it's able to provide new concepts to the market. After all, the whole point of building a startup is to drive innovation. Spending less time, money, and effort on research and development will only make it difficult for your startup to scale amid a tech-driven landscape that's constantly changing.

Take the time to learn the issues and problems that are prevalent in your market. How will your startup solve these problems? How can you align your products or services with current trends?

One thing's for sure, you wouldn't want to rely too much on your core activities. As the bottomline grows, you should set aside a portion of your earnings for fueling innovation.

In case you are not sure  about starting an innovation program, consider getting a partner who can help you develop an innovation strategy and unlock your startup's potential as a leader for transformative disruption.

6. Forge strategic partnerships

In some cases, startup founders overlook one essential part in scaling their organizations: The need to form partnerships.

While you can relish in the idea that your startup is the product of your own toil, you will still need to find business partners who can be instrumental in helping you find growth opportunities in other areas and locations.

You just need to develop a desire to build alliances with potential growth partners. Look for mentors and industry leaders to connect with and find out how your business can fit into their agenda. From there, introduce your startup and what it is developing recently.

Once you have forged partnerships with important industry figures, you will be able to discover new growth opportunities to leverage.

The need to scale is becoming more important as more startups enter the arena. so put these tips to the test and let your startup thrive for more than a decade!

How To Do A Proper Market Analysis For Your Startup

 

Before you even start a business, it's important you spend some time researching the market to understand its ins and outs. This will put you in a position to formulate a proper strategy that ensures your business can survive in a highly competitive environment. A market analysis is also vital to figuring out the best way to serve your customers.

As an aspiring entrepreneur, conducting a proper market analysis might seem daunting. However, it's actually simpler than you might think.

Here's a guide on how you should do a proper market analysis for your startup: 

What's A Market Analysis?

A market analysis is a detailed quantitative and qualitative assessment of the prevailing market conditions in a particular industry. The main objective of the market analysis is to examine the different market dynamics to get the answer to questions such as;

·      Who are your potential customers?

·      How big is your target market?

·      What are your customers’ buying habits?

·      Who's the competition?

·      What are your competitor's strengths and weaknesses?

Answering these questions will give you a much better grasp of the market conditions and your prospective customers. If you need any help, you should visit infinigrow.com or other similar websites to get help from professionals.

How Do You Conduct an Exhaustive Market Analysis?

Conducting a market analysis isn't complicated, but you have to spend some time researching thoroughly. Here are the steps you should follow during this process;

1.  Determine Your Purpose

Start by finding out the real reason for conducting a market analysis. Some of the reasons include creating opportunities, assessing business threats, and minimizing problems. It's crucial you know this right from the start because it helps stay on track the whole time.

You'll need to determine if the market analysis is meant for internal or external purposes. Internal purposes include business operations and improved cash flow while external purposes can be to request a business loan. Knowing the exact purpose is what will decide the amount and research you'll need to do.

2.  Research Your Industry

The next thing you should do is carry out in-depth research of your industry to understand it better and gauge the direction it's heading. You must always do this regardless of whether you're starting a large or small company. A comprehensive market research, will help you identify several essential industry metrics such as;

·      Projected growth rates

·      Prospective customer demographics

·      The market size in various locations

·      The industry's major trends 

You should frequently conduct market research to see whether investing your time and money in the industry is worthwhile. If so, the comprehensive market analysis will also help you identify the competitive advantage you have over your competitors that you can offer to your target market.

3.  Pinpoint Your Target Market

One fact you'll need to accept when starting your business is that your products or services won't appeal to everyone. You shouldn't waste your time and effort trying to convince uninterested parties to buy your products or services. Instead, you need to identify your potential customers. This part of the process is known as target market analysis.

To know your target customers, their expected buying habits, and how many of them are out there, you need to assess factors such as;

1. ·      Gender
2. ·      Age
3. ·      Education level
4. ·      Income
5. ·      Occupation
6. ·      Location
7. ·       Needs and interests

Factoring in all of these will help you design the ideal customer persona. In most cases, you'll have different personas that you should use this to help you pinpoint your typical customer. Once you do this, you'll be able to efficiently and easily cater to the needs of your potential customers.

4.  Research Your Competitors

Your market analysis won't be complete if you don't take time to examine your competitors, and this includes;

1. ·      Their main objectives
2. ·      Their strengths and weaknesses
3. ·      Their market saturation
4. ·      How they differ from you
5. ·      Their marketing strategies

You should also write down a list of your competitors and rank them based on their strengths and weaknesses. You can get most of this information from news and media sources, as well as your competitors’ physical store locations, websites, and social media pages. With all this in mind, you'll know how to differentiate your startup from the rest by filling any gaps left by your competitors.  

5.  Predict Your Market Share

The final step when doing a market analysis is to create a prediction of your prospective market share. This entails determining the percentage of the market you'll have in your control. Using this, you'll be able to figure out your projected revenue, pricing structure, and whether you need to get a business loan.

Takeaway

The goal of market analysis is to know everything possible about the industry you're planning to enter. This might sound somewhat intimidating for first-time entrepreneurs, but it doesn't have to be that way with the help of this guide.    

 

 

Huawei Unveils Its Plan to Commit $100Mfor Startups in APAC

At the inaugural HUAWEI CLOUD Spark Founders Summit that took place simultaneously in Singapore and Hong Kong, Huawei has announced that it will be investing $100 million on the startup ecosystem in the Asia Pacific region for the next three years. This investment will go towards its Spark Program in the Asia Pacific region, which aims to build a sustainable startup ecosystem.

Huawei also announced that this program will focus on developing startup ecosystem in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The company aims to recruit a total of 1,000 startups into the Spark accelerator program and is looking to shape 100 of them into scaleups.

“Startups and SMEs are the innovators, disruptors, and pioneers of our times. 34 years ago, Huawei was a startup with just 5,000 dollars of registered capital. Recently, we have been thinking: How can we leverage our experience and resources to help more startups address their challenges? Doing so would allow them to seize the opportunities posed by digital transformation, achieve business success, and develop more innovative products and solutions for the world,” said Huawei Senior Vice President and Board Member Catherine Chen.

Last year, Huawei launched the Spark Program in Asia Pacific to work with local governments, well-known VC firms, leading incubators, and top universities to build support platforms for startups. Currently, 40 startups are participating in this program.

 

Neobanking Startup Jupiter Raises $44M in Series B

Neobanking startup Jupiter is now valued at $300 million after it raised $44 million in its Series B round. The round was led by Brazil-based Nubank, Sequoia Capital India, Matrix Partners India, and Global Founders Capital. Mirae Assets Venture also joined the round. Existing investors Tanglin VC, 314 Capital, Beenext, Greyhound, and Addition Ventures participated in the round.

Jupiter was founded in 2019 and was established as a neobank for the consumers in India. Earlier, Jupiter had raised $25 million in seed funding and Series A rounds. With the latest funding round, Jupiter has more than doubled its valuation.

The latest funding will be used by the 100% digital bank to recruit talent and scale up its business.

“Nubank and Jupiter share the mission of making banking the best experience possible for our customers, putting an end to all the bureaucracy and the pain in the current system. The Indian and Brazilian markets have many similarities and through this investment, we aim to support Jupiter in their growth path. We see a lot of potential and are excited about joining them so early on their journey,” said David Vélez, founder and chief executive of Nubank, in a statement.

Jupiter was founded by the industry-veteran Jitendra Gupta who wants to solve India’s inflexible traditional banking system.

Tips to ensure business continuity in the golden age of start-ups

Whether you want to start an online clothing store, real estate firm, or Blockchain venture, the economic context has never been friendlier for entrepreneurs. Funding options are more flexible than ever before, digital marketing is affordable, and customers are generally receptive of startups. At the same time, competition is becoming fiercer by the day and success is by no means guaranteed. In fact, statistics show that, even with the perks above, 90% of startups fail. A solid business plan and a great product are the basic requirements for a healthy organization, but here’s what else you need to ensure its continuity:

Mentorship and professional business counseling

Everyone looks up to entrepreneurs and expects a great deal from them. They have to be leaders, innovators, strategic thinkers, and financial experts. However, entrepreneurs are humans too and they can’t achieve everything at once. Not without help, at least. Even if you strongly believe in your product and mission statement, running an organization is never easy, especially when you’re doing this for the first time. A mentor or business counselor can help you navigate the troubled waters of entrepreneurship and contribute with their know-how to help your organization thrive. Successful businessmen like Lawrence Jemal have made companies excel so if you feel that your goals are beyond reach, don’t hesitate to ask for advice. According to the Startup Genome Report, which delves into the reasons why most startups fail, mentored startups grow up to 3.5 times faster than unmentored ones and raise seven times more money. Lack of experience isn’t necessarily a drawback if you never stop learning and know where to ask for help.

Mastering scalability

After months of planning and grinding, finally breaking through and turning your brand into a household name is both rewarding and intoxicating. While it’s normal to be excited, celebrate, and make big plans, you should also stay realistic. Growing too much, too soon can have the opposite effect and generate an internal crisis. For best results, you should try to expand slowly, based on a thorough scalability plan. Without the resources, staff, and infrastructure, small startups can become overwhelmed, encounter production issues, and fail to deliver. Overinvesting and growth for the sake of growth aren’t good in the long run. To ensure business continuity, your expansion plan needs to be realistic and sustainable.

Balancing innovation with feasibility

Buzz phrases like “disruptive”, “thinking outside the box” and “making the world a better place” make entrepreneurs want to shock and inspire. While innovation is important in business, it also needs to be rooted in the reality of the market. A product idea may sound awesome but do you have what it takes to make it real fast enough? According to a 2015 study, 42% of innovations fail because they take too long to develop and customers lose interest. And last, but, definitely not least, ask yourself if there is a demand for your product. To be successful, you need a creative spirit, but a practical sense is just as important. Once you’ve managed to reach a balance between these two, you’ll be unstoppable.