Editor’s Note: Our team of programmers and graphic designers not only offers custom web and mobile solutions for tech startups but we also do our best to use our blog as a source of valuable information for entrepreneurs. This is another article which is supposed to help would-be founders of new business ventures bring their startups to success.
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Getting a startup off the ground can be a long and complex undertaking and at the very least something with a lot of little details and variables that need to be managed at the same time. In addition to product or service development, you need to worry about marketing, getting your first customers and making sure all the functionality is glitch free.
For these reasons and many others, efficient business organization is what you absolutely need to harness and manage effectively. By creating your company through a strong organizational filter right from day one, you'll have less headaches to deal with and be more able to focus on growth customer service expansions and, most important of all, scalability.
This last point is vitally important; a well-organized startup is a scalable startup, or at least it's closer to being scalable than the typical ad hoc one man small business. And if you want to really seriously grow, organizational scalability is your number one priority because it's the main factor that distinguishes a Facebook from a mom & pop digital shop.
Now, let's go over some key tips to doing just this; organizing your startup effectively for maximum growth and future scalability.
1. Define a Business Plan, or at Least a Set of Strategies
Obviously startup operations are often fluid, spur of the moment and evolutionary; you can't plan ahead for everything and sometimes what you did plan will have to change. However, this shouldn't stop you from working out a clearly defined series of basic strategies and business goals that you're hoping to achieve within a certain times.
Additionally, set out the limits of your business, what it won't do and where it doesn't want to go so that you have clearly known exclusion zones that you can stay away from as you grow and learn.
2. Systemize as Much as Possible
Don't run your business in a freewheeling ad-hoc manner! Look for opportunities like this? Yes. Experiment with new Products like this? Yes. But do not actually run your business operations without systematizing them! Instead, make sure that you create at least a series of loose procedures for how you manage finances, track advertising, track analytics and manage customer relations. This will not only boost your appearance of professionalism, it will also make your business into a more professionally run and more durable organization.
3. Budget Your Finances Strictly
The usually startup story of most small companies is one of shoestring budgets, cutting tight corners and waiting for those sales to finally start making a profit. This is all fine, but don't let it turn into a sort of fetish either. The whole point of your business is to make you money, maybe even make you rich; so aim for that right from day one in a clear strategic way.
This means two main things: The first is creating a real budget with real and carefully enforced accounting rules for every penny you spend. Be strategic about this and funnel whatever money to where your previously mentioned analytics indicates will generate the most returns for your probably limited resources. There are great free software apps out there that can help you do this in a delightfully clear way - mint.com being a great example.
Secondly, focus on earnings. Having done your analytics, set out your resource spending and calculated all your costs, start focusing all of these things on the one single most important thing in business, sales! Even if you're planning on going for VC funding or crowdsourcing or pitching to Angel investors and hoping for that big financial break, it doesn't matter, get a steady flow of income going so you can show the world that you are self sufficient and not completely dependent on having money handed to you by some organization. This steady sales income (even if small potatoes) will give your little startup the single biggest leg-up it can get if it wants to survive for the long run.
About the author: Steven Boggs is a consummate freelance professional with years of experience covering the technology industry under his belt. When Steven isn’t reviewing tools for small businesses for companies like EnMast, he spends his time training for his upcoming triathlon.