From Start-up to Growth mode!

Here I am sitting in Discovered’s brand-new office after another manic week, office no.4 in our journey so far, and it’s crazy to think back to where we started from just under 3 years ago. John and I began working alongside a host of bright eyed and eager entrepreneur’s at Astrolabs co-working offices, surrounded by hundreds of others, sharing knowledge, wins and setbacks, all trying to turn our dreams into reality. 10 months in and we had saved up enough funds to secure our first office, which was shortly followed our first employee, under 12 months later a further move then allowed us to double the size of the office again. Fast forward to where we are now, we have a home and HQ that we are super proud off and more importantly a work environment that the team simply love!

The reason for all the office moves, team growth. Most start-ups would love to hire a bunch of employees from day one, if only there was a money tree just for start-ups ;). Unfortunately for a self-funded business like ours and many other SME’s cash flow is king, and with this every new hire in the early days is a massive risk with all the associated costs involved. However, we have been lucky enough to attract some of the most talented consultants to Discovered, who have helped supercharge our growth. This can be one of the most challenging tasks to get right with a start-up, hiring the right people, even for Talent Solutions businesses like ours, we find it difficult. With 100% retention so far, I would like to think we have got this spot on. As a business we have doubled our headcount year on year and are now one of the fastest growing providers in the region.

As the team grows, whilst in start-up mode it can be easy to start banking the increased revenue and try to build the bank balance, however this will only get you so far. If you want to grow you have to take risks and re-invest. Whilst there have been nervy times for us, where we have been scrambling around for invoices to be paid a couple of days before we run payroll, it has all worked out… thankfully. At every opportunity possible, we have re-invested; from workplace, to new employees, our new website, with our investment we have been able to gradually improve all elements of our business.

At the start, when our operation was a two-man band, our service offering was limited, we stuck to what we knew, only partnered with a select few businesses and delivered an exceptional service. As we have expanded, so have our capabilities and we are now providing a number of solutions to both scaling start-ups and the biggest organisations in world. What’s not changed is the level of high service we provide, another area where scaling businesses tend to fail.

 One of the most pleasing elements in our growth story, is that we gambled on offering one of most competitive sets of benefits to our employees - https://www.discovered.ae/blog/2019/02/benefits-what-do-employees-want-and-what-can-employers-realistically-offer-these-days. Some of these had never been offered in our sector of work, let alone Dubai. The results have surpassed what we could have imagined, a super motivated team and the best performing I have worked with. All of the team have had either their best month or best quarter (or both) in their recruitment career to date and most have only been with us a year. As a result, we have been able to give back more to our team who helped get us to where we are, which resulted in a once in a lifetime trip to Las Vegas. Next up, a few of the team are already close to packing their goggles for our next incentive; Snowbombing 2020 in Austria. 

So, as we leave our start-up days behind us and continue in growth mode, the next set of investments for 2020 will see more focus on training, health and well-being, marketing and if you have been paying attention to the pictures we have 3 empty seats for our next 3 hires… Therefore, if you are a recruiter within the Tech/Digital/ Data space, get in touch and have a chat. 

If you are Intrigued into why many of the region’s leading start-up and enterprise businesses have choose to partner with us, the kettle is always on to stop by.