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Learn how to manage the growing pains
The completion of each funding round brings a great sense of achievement, pride, and excitement towards the company’s ambitious goals. Co-founders and their leadership team ask themselves key questions about growing their business, expanding their sales, meeting revenue goals, and achieving healthy growth while avoiding the pitfalls that have tripped up other startups.
To help startups navigate the growth process smoothly and effectively, I have developed a growth framework based on my research and the “Greiner growth curve model”. This framework identifies several growth phases that all startups go through, each with its own specific characteristics, challenges, and growing pains both internally and externally.
Each phase includes the growth engines that need to be developed and implemented in the startup and the potential crises that need to be proactively managed, otherwise it will negatively impact the future growth trajectory.
It is important to emphasize that we cannot disconnect the business and the company growth processes from the personalities of the founders and specifically that of the founding CEO. The work style, characteristics, blind spots, biases, and strengths dramatically influence the ability of the startup to grow effectively. I have worked with many startups where the internal dynamics within the founding team amplified the intensity and magnitude of the startup’s growing pains.
Through a structured process, I work with co-founders and leadership teams to assess their current growth stage, develop a growth strategy tailored to their specific startup, and identify the specific emotional and psychological growth engines that need to be developed as well as the potential crises that need to be proactively managed.
