Growing a startup fast is essentially every entrepreneur’s dream. It may be necessary to step away from traditional methods and embrace new ways to get rapid growth. You may be surprised to hear the best companies and the most successful startups have grown in unconventional ways, and some have disregarded everything taught in business schools.
These tips are most suitable for startups; however, they can work for just about any small business. A startup is a company in the first stage of its operations. These companies are often initially bankrolled by their entrepreneurial founders as they attempt to capitalise on developing a product or service for which they believe there is a demand.
The process of growing a small company fast is known as blitzscaling. These tips have been adapted from the book Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh.
Table of Contents
- Embrace Chaos
- Hire the right person for the current scenario
- ‘Bad’ management
- Launch a product even if it embarrasses you
- Learn to say no
- Not everything can be scaled up.
- Sometimes you may have to ignore your customers.
Embrace Chaos
Sometimes small businesses may have to give up the need to be regular and maintain everything in order. To grow, startups may need to sacrifice efficiency for speed. So the focus on order and regularity may need to be replaced with a willingness to embrace a chaos-filled environment. However, embracing chaos doesn’t mean not bothering about anything and letting chaos take over. It means accepting uncertainty and finding ways to deal with it.
Hire the right person for the current scenario
Sometimes a great executive may not fit in with the company’s vision. A person with a lot of experience is not always the right person for the job. For example, hiring a person who has been managing a 1000 person team to lead a ten-person squad could be a bad idea. Hire managers and staff suitable for the stage the company is currently in, rather than hiring for the future or what the company could become.
‘Bad’ management
Speed is most important here, so you may have to promote people before they are ready and let go of people even if they want to stay. To grow quickly, reorganising and fixing mistakes is more critical than slowly building relationships with your staff.
Bad management could also help tackle all types of challenges that come the way of the business, which could help the company in many ways. Instead of having clear-cut goals, companies have reached higher levels of success by remaining open-ended and making management decisions according to the situation.
Launch a product even if it embarrasses you
This is something that many business experts won’t agree with. However, this has worked successfully for many companies. If the choice is between marketing an imperfect product right away versus waiting for a perfect product, the option should be the flawed product. Getting the products into customers’ hands could get you feedback and help you bring out a better product next time rather than wait to bring out a product that few people may feel is perfect. However, this doesn’t mean you should cut corners or launch a product that is most likely to fail. Don’t delay launches; instead, use the opportunity to gain user feedback and improve the product.
Learn to say no
Learning to say no can be as crucial as saying yes to many projects. There are likely many issues that require attention. Learning to prioritise the problems so that the company’s growth will be faster is very important. Some issues are likely to be essential but won’t hinder growth, these require tackling, but they can wait.
Not everything can be scaled up.
Not every project has to scale up. According to many business gurus, taking up projects that don’t scale can help startups. Some companies have listed the CEO’s number as the customer service helpline simply because that was all the customer service. This is not a scalable idea; however, new numbers were updated when the company grew, and a customer service representative and team arrived.
“A hack that takes a tenth of the time may be more useful than an elegantly engineered solution.” The book said.
Sometimes you may have to ignore your customers.
Again, this goes against the fundamental rule of business and the main mantra of customer service. However, for companies that want to grow at lightning speed, the best option can be to provide whatever customer service it can as long as it doesn’t slow down growth. But if it is an option between dealing with more significant issues and ignoring customers, then for a quick-growing startup ignoring could be the way to go.
For more tips and tricks on Blitzscaling, read the book – The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh.
