Marketing – marketing should ultimately create more customers for your start-up. Without customers, you are playing business. For successful growth, 50% of your time, money and energy should be invested into marketing.
Money – There are a few ways to grow revenue: increase customers, increase transactions, increase transaction value and so on. Knowing who, what, where, when and how money comes from is important for successful growth.
Model – Having a unique value proposition and related product, service or solution is only half the battle. Knowing how your business model creates, delivers and captures value is certainly critical for successful growth.
Mentors – Finding people who have been-there-done-that, but more importantly who can articulate why things turned out the way they did, gives founders objective feedback needed for successful growth without being too emotionally invested in decision making.
Metrics – A method for measuring what you do in your start-up is useful for focusing on growth. Micro-testing the above four categories before you “bet all your chips on black” is important for successful growth.
