As our global economy evolves, the landscape of business has changed. The days of 9-5 wearing a suit, clean shaved, and a tie are no more (well some fields still require this). Now we live in a work environment where you can wear what you want, rock a beard, and have a man bun. In all this commotion the concept of the start up culture arrived. Start up cool became a thing, and everyone wanted to say they work for a start up. And I am now one of them, I work for an Italian based start up and I LOVE it.
But at what point do you stop saying you work for a start up? Meaning you cannot be a start up forever, I mean all companies started up from somewhere. But in order to scale your start up must grow and after time it is no longer a start up and needs to start taking steps to grow, be acquired, or go public.
This brings me to new lessons I have learned working in this awesome culture of start ups.
1. Be ready for anything
As your start up grows be ready for calls, emails, messages from everyone wanting to partner with you, be a part of it, distribution. All of it. Be ready to know when to say no, and when to add to your ever growing team. In order to scale you will have to bring in some outside expertise and skills.
2. Trust the process
You put plans in place for a reason, and sometimes they do not always go as planned. And that is okay, you can learn from that. But also what you need to do is give it time, time for the plan to be put in place, time for the users to react, and time for it to take hold and springboard you. Don’t get caught following to much in the wind and stick to your convictions and your gut instincts.
3. Scale
If you want to grow and make money, you NEED to have a plan that allows you to scale with the market and scale with the growth.
4. Fundraising
When you are in the fundraising process, there is no blanket answer or pitch for everything. Make sure you have your key messages in place and be able to adapt to the market and the potential investors.
Working in a start up is a lot of fun, and you have to be able to move quickly and wear multiple hats. But never forget what your goals are that you started out with. And keep driving the ship in the direction you want to go. You must know what your end goal is and strive for it.
Hope these takeaways can help you as you launch into working for a start up. Have any others feel free to share!
