The Product focus of different stages of a Startup

Having worked in my fair share of tech companies be it in startups of different phases and corporates, I've observed what sets these companies apart in terms of scalability and sustainability.

In this article, I will share based on my personal observation what should a company focus on especially from the Product point of view.

Early stage

An early stage startup to me is a company built based on wild ideas and not proven entirely yet. Hence, the product focus of such a company should be 80% innovation and 20% foundation.

Innovation = Validating wild ideas, new revenue streams, products that will potentially provide 10x, 20x growth

Foundation = Setting up proper processes, structure, products to assist in scalability, growth and sustainability

This simply means that a company at this stage can forgo setting up proper processes/structure early on and focus on growing the company in the sketchiest manner.

Not entirely forgoing them of course but the main focus here should always be on validating ideas fast enough and then pivoting till you've found the growth driver of your company. Having too many processes and structure in place may, in my opinion, cause the growth of a company to be affected.

Growth stage

Now that your ideas have been validated, it is time to fly! But as we all know if you fly without any or much support or wings, when you fall, you fall hard even if you did not fly very high. Ouch indeed.

So to me, a company in the growth stage should be focused on 70% foundation and 30% innovation.

Many companies at this stage are not willing to spend on resources to set up proper processes and structure. Understandably, companies at this stage may still be dependent on investments hence growth simply equal sales. The focus then is always on prioritising sales, sometimes at all cost. And this is where the danger lies.

The traditional method of depending on more human resources to scale a company is no longer the only method or the best method.

I've seen personally how a company that I worked at scaled their revenue by reducing dependence on human resources to drive sales and by purely focusing on the products itself. Letting your products speak for themselves is the new growth method. Especially if the products has proven to be an excellent one.

But what is more important is the support that complements your product in terms of processes and structure.

Tying back to my analogy of flying without foundational support, having proper processes and structure in place will enable the products to scale better and faster and higher with ease. And if any issues arise, the processes and structure are there in place to enable the company to quickly stand up again to take off.

Some examples of processes and structure:-

Structure (Examples):

• Putting in place teams to support the processes
• Hierarchy (ie How quick can one make decisions)
• Platforms/Product/Features for internal teams to quickly monitor data, customers, growth
• Platforms/Product/Features for customers to quickly make decisions without needing additional explanations

Processes (Examples)

• How to connect Platform A to platform B to Platform C and then back to Platform A
• Standardisation of services customers receive
• Which team to support/solve what issues (should we go from Point A to Point B to Point C to solve a problem? Or can Point A go straight to Point C which is obviously faster)

These are just some basic examples which can be expanded or changed based on the needs of a particular company. The point is to truly fly, we need wings. And these are the wings to help a business scale higher and faster (Faster in the longer term journey. Not the short term spikes)

Mature Stage

For mature stage companies, most times, processes and structure are finally in place and they reap the benefits of it. So while enjoying the fruits of their 'labor', they forget about innovation because they are now in a very comfortable stage.

They are in this stage where they're afraid of changes no matter how big or small. Best if everything stays status quo...forever.

But as we know, we can't be living in this 'fantasy' world forever. Mature Stage companies should go back to the drawing board and their focus should be 70% innovation and 30% foundation.

Why? Now that your support is in place, you need not worry about knee jerk reactions by your competitors. What you should be afraid of are new startups, new ideas that will disrupt your product/market entirely. As technology advances, there will always be new competitors we never expected or knew of. So mature companies should themselves be innovating all the time to keep up with the times.

I end by saying, to sustain is to innovate, and to innovate is to support.

The above writing is merely my personal observations and thoughts. I like penning down my thoughts as it enables me to observe and grow internally. So I hope this will be beneficial as well to those who are reading this.