You have a great idea, but now what? You have to convince investors, you have to get a business plan done, you have to find customers and make sales. Your startup has to go through all those stages before it can reach its goal. And, as a founder, you have to be there through all those stages to make sure the company is moving in the right direction.
You may have an idea of what you want to do and how you want to do it, but you don’t know how to translate that into a business plan. That’s where you start.
This is when you validate your product and market hypothesis by building pre-releases and taking feedback from your customers. This feedback helps you develop the final product in later stages.
Growth stage is when you start getting traction. This means the number of customers that your startup attracts is increasing. At this stage, your startup has to focus on marketing and sales.
In scaling stage, you focus on growing the team and getting the most out of your value proposition. This stage includes working on the core product and expanding into new markets.
Maturity is an indication that your startup life has reached a saturation point. At this stage, your idea is no more unique and new competitors have evolved taking away the competitive advantage you had previously. This is the phase where you need to decide on the future of your organisation again.