Tag: startup - Page 2

You’ve founded a startup. You’ve been putting in 80 hour weeks, working every moment you’re awake, sleeping in the office and it seems like it’s paying off! Numbers are rising, and you’re gathering media buzz. But then—everything stops. Traffic drops, registrations decline. You’re still trying to secure that next round of funding, and a drop in numbers right now could be fatal. It’s now or never. 

Okay, take a breath. That was just a thought exercise. But it’s an important topic, and one any founder or aspiring founder should have a plan for. Just how do you kickstart your startup’s growth to get you to that next round? We’ve assembled five tools to help you get your startup off life support and into major growth mode. 

After over 20 years in marketing industry, I’ve pretty much seen it all.

Then I meet a client that achieves the impossible, and recently, for me that was Frank Richmond, the Founder of Cirrus Networks.

Start-ups by their very nature are exactly that; just a start. In every new entrepreneurial adventure, you’re drawing up your blueprint for business from scratch and the journey is often terrifying and exhilarating. Laszlo Szabo, the creator of Little Sale Birdy, a revolutionary retail website that will change the way Australian’s shop by sale, shares the seven lessons he learned in the first year of his successful start-up (ones they’ll never tell you in business and marketing school):

When I started Marketing Eye more than 9 years ago, I had a vision to be the world's best small business marketing firm. I dreamt that I would open offices all over the world that would sell marketing services backed by sophisticated technology platforms, media and education, to businesses that had revenues of $1 million to $200 million.

Primarily, the companies that would be ideal clients were one's that were entrepreneur-led, like me, and who had a dream to significantly grow their businesses and mostly be industry game-changers - although the latter wasn't exactly necessary.

In the early days, we had hurdles. The first was our own mind-set of being use to working with funded startups or medium to large corporations and shifting the way we interacted, engaged and nurtured our clients to success to cater for burgeoning SMB market.

It took time. More time than I ever imagined. 

What started out as a dream became a reality, much faster than I anticipated.

Many entrepreneurs can attest to having a dream or maybe just something on their bucket list that needs to be crossed off. I am one of those people. I have a dream but most importantly for me, an item on my bucket list that needs to be crossed off by a given time frame. 

What once was a dirty word to me, the position of entrepreneur in a fast growing, dynamic company is the most exhilarating career choice I could have every made.

What other job has you jumping out of bed at 5am each morning, dressing in a matter of minutes and rushing off to the office to start your day? For that matter, what other job gives you the highs of an entrepreneur and the flexibility to be exactly who you are?

Today, I am reminded yet again why start-ups fail.

I met with a lovely couple a few weeks ago who wanted to open a retail store. They have a dream to work for themselves and the wife wanted to be in fashion.

They are new to the market and have never owned a fashion outlet, but they both have passion and are determined to do it.

I asked all the normal questions;

Something strange is going on.  A lot of successful business people say that there comes a time in your business life cycle that it either plateaus or the business fires with the injection of new products or services.