It started with an ‘aha!’ moment at your kitchen table or on the commute back from your day job. You have spent countless hours in your free time and the odd hours of your day job strategizing and getting your idea underway. You managed to get a group of like-minded people, not only willing to juggle their day jobs, but also believe in the product as much as you do. You put your own money in, maxed out your credit cards and hustled the hell out of things. You finally made it to the next level; finance has come through to provide you 12 months’ worth of runway. After the celebration with your fellow co-founders, you look each other in the eyes and say: ‘now what?’. Your funding has come with explicit instructions to scale and show the possibility of profits at the end of 12 months. How do you go from startup to scale up? Here are some key considerations.
Hustling is great and the only way to show investors you are serious. However, a hustle mindset for startups that need to scale up might work counter-productively. If everybody does a bit of everything and can make decisions on all things related to the business, you are going to create chaos. You will need to start “functionalizing” jobs. This can be a painful process as you will find multiple co-founders wanting to take on marketing for example. And as much as you want to reward co-founders for their work and loyalty, tough decisions need to be made, even if that means people are leaving.
As you assign people to their functional roles and give them the funds to build out their teams, consider if being a great hustler also means being a great manager. The answer is usually that these don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Consider hiring great coaches for your department heads, ones who can guide them through going from a startup to scaled business mindset.
Your business is now set to grow, which means new people are joining you. It’s too easy to fall into the trap of treating people who were there from the beginning differently to new joiners. This will lead to a particular culture that can lead to new joiners not adapting properly or not becoming part of the business in a way that’s desired. Carefully integrate new starters and ensure you absorb them fully into your business as quickly as possible.
As the days of the hustle will become a distant memory, you will need to start considering all those things that come with every business. Have you set up employee retirement, maternity and paternity leave, employee rewards, do you need a CFO, do you need to hire company cleaners, what are you doing for your payroll, do you need payroll recruitment consultants, what about everything else related to HR? The list seems endless but get advice and help from other entrepreneurs and business advisors and consultants.
And as you guide your company to be a well-oiled machine, you might get the startup ‘itch’ again. Promote or hire a new CEO and get your hustle on again!