As a business owner in a fast-paced landscape, how do you grow your tech startup in 2022? We’re sharing insider tips on how you can generate more revenue, attract new customers, and better navigate your company to success today.
Growing a startup is both a pain and pleasure that only founders understand. And as we said before, it’s a walk in the park, a Jurassic park, in this case. As you build your business, there will be peaks and valleys. There will be surprises; good and bad. Nevertheless, it will fall nothing short of thrills.
There will also be questions. How do you make your employees happy? What can you do to not get overshadowed by competitors? Do you need more resources to scale? How do you grow your customer base? All these questions lead to one thing: Growing Your Company.
Today, we will discuss the best practices startups can leverage to thrive in the volatile tech industry. Here are our key points:
- The Important Foundations of a Startup
- How to Grow your Startup in 2022
- Best Practices to Grow Your Tech Startup
- Grow Your Startup Today
The Important Foundations of a Startup
While nothing is guaranteed or promised when it comes to starting up, cultivating a solid foundation right from the start certainly helps increase your likelihood of survival.
Generally, a business has four functional areas: management, operations, finance, and marketing. These are the key areas most businesses, regardless of size, are built on.
Let’s describe each of the four functional areas.
1. Management. The management area covers the entire business leadership, planning, organization, and control aspects of a company. From the C-suite executives to the team leaders per subunit, the primary function of management is to supervise the performance and processes of the organization.
2. Operations. Each business’ core lies within operations. This is where organizations factor in the production of goods and services. The organization handles the procurement of resources, product development, maintenance, and logistics in this area.
3. Finance. The finance department handles the organizational cash flow. This involves the company’s efforts in planning, obtaining, and managing funds, from short-term to long-term.
4. Marketing. Marketing handles activities that generate brand recognition, activate sales, and represent the company in a positive manner. They answer what the customers want and strategize how to fulfill that demand.
But do startups actually need to meet each of these functional areas? The short answer is YES. Regardless of size, all businesses need to operate under the abovementioned functional areas to solidify their foundation and better prepare for growth.
5 Startup Principals to Generate Growth
In startups, while there oftentimes may be limitations in resources, the business model allows freedom for one person to have multiple roles. For example, one could handle both the finance and marketing functions. But as time evolves, companies need to fulfill roles in additional functional areas in order to grow.
Medium defines the foundations for startup success to ensure growth. They are mission, vision, team, technology, and traction.
Mission
Business growth is a result of motivated steps towards a bigger goal. So, it pays to create a mission statement that would encourage growth for the future. This one-to-two-sentence paragraph articulates WHAT you do and what you’re willing to achieve.
Vision
The vision statement explains WHY you’re doing what you do. That vision should detail the purpose of your efforts in growing your company and answers the benefits you will reap when you accomplish your mission.
Team
Organizing a group of people with the right skills, competence, and drive propels the company to grow fast. This is where you curate the core of your business operations, which is its people. Deciding on WHO your startup team members need on the team can make or break your business. So be sure to hire partners or team members that you can rely on.
Technology
In today’s business landscape, technology is indispensable. So, a startup must invest in leveraging technology WHERE it applies in business. This includes using tech-based services, CRMs, company websites, digital marketing, etc.
As such, you need to identify a minimum viable product (MVP) that would be at the forefront of your revenue-generating efforts.
Traction
With a product built, a startup must look after its traction. This metric is fundamental in determining if and WHEN your product is growing and gaining momentum.
Startup Foundations: Why You Need Them
Whether it’s on the operational or the product side, establishing the core foundations of your company is vital. Doing so ensures that your company sets up benchmarks for measuring growth. Which leads us to the next part, “how to grow your startup?”
How to Grow Your Startup in 2022
The foundational elements and functional areas of a startup are integral for building a company. Because of today’s exciting innovation driven by digital transformation, people with mutual business interests converge and optimize the current environment.
However, it takes more than just tech expertise and business acumen to sustain the traction and growth of a company. It is where managerial genius comes into play. A company must utilize its resources to ensure growth over time. We will discuss the best practices and strategies for growing your startup in 2022.
Best Practices to Grow Your Tech Startup
If you want to grow your startup, you can follow some best practices. In this way, you can architect your company’s direction geared towards growth and sustainability.
1. Optimize Processes Using the Best-Fit Development Methodology.
Most tech startups revolve around software development. As such, it’s advantageous to leverage the best development methodology that applies to modern-day software teams. In this case, Agile and its variants are the best methodologies to follow.
For example, the Lean Startup variant focuses on building a minimum viable product (MVP) to launch into the market quickly. The latter allows startups to develop fast solutions and iterate based on the feedback process.
2. Identify Your Target Market and Audience.
While today’s industrial landscape offers a myriad of opportunities for entrepreneurs, a company can truly benefit from hitting its target niche.
Before building the product itself, you should have built your team with people who have experience in your chosen market. In this way, it’s easier to identify your target audience and create your customer profile. Furthermore, this will help you customize your sales funnel better by channeling your marketing efforts to the right consumers.
3. Organize Your Team and Processes.
Once you have identified your target audience and development methodologies, it’s time to organize your team. For this part, you have to assemble different teams to handle different functions. And this designation of resources eases the delegation of tasks.
Along the way, you also need to engineer the processes under which the teams would work. What is the escalation path? How do you handle cross-team communications? Who is the point person for this and that? And so on.
4. Leverage Technology and Productivity Tools
As a tech startup, you can optimize your development methodology and processes in different functional areas when you use technology. With this, there are several productivity tools for various operational areas today.
We have communication tools such as Slack or Zoom. There are also other productivity tools for software developers like Jira and GitHub that would speed up their workflow.
As for employee management, you can use time tracking tools such as Clockify or TSheets. These are simple tools that you can integrate into your processes.
5. Keep an Eye for Startup Trends in the Industry.
One key for startup growth is sailing with the currents. So, one best practice is to keep an eye on trends in your respective industry.
In tech, competition is tight, and customers are always looking for more efficient options. As a tech company owner, you would want to stay ahead of the game. Thus, it’s always to your advantage when you apply the latest trends to your business, processes, and product.
6. Iterate.
Considering the abovementioned best practices, you can make sense of those efforts as you continuously iterate. You have a development process that incorporates a feedback system from your target market. And you also have the industry trends into consideration. So, the next thing is to synergize those elements to espouse your company’s growth.
Grow Your Startup Today!
When you invest efforts in digital transformation and best practices for growth, you can ensure sustainability for your startup. That would mean that you established the right foundation and have done the appropriate actions.
But what can you do if you don’t know where or how to start growing your startup? Full Scale can help!
Full Scale Offers Fast and Affordable Software Development
We are one of the fastest-growing software development companies in the United States. Our main headquarters is in Kansas City and we provide software development and digital services through our offshore team in the Philippines.
Our talent pool includes software developers, QA testers, technical writers, content marketers, and graphic designers.
At Full Scale, we handle the entire assessment and recruitment process. So, our clients don’t have to worry about doing the recruitment themselves. Just determine what kind of tech professional you’re looking for, and we’ll provide them for you. Grow your company with Full Scale today!
