By Vu Tran<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

To lay the foundations for future success, the are some key boxes all startups need to tick in the early growth stages, regardless of the nature of their business.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having participated in Y Combinator\u2019s seed accelerator program, my co-founders\u00a0and I gained some\u00a0fantastic insights that helped put our edtech startup\u00a0GO1\u00a0the right track right from day one. Reflecting on our experiences with GO1, I have identified the\u00a0five key areas every start-up should consider to ensure their success:<\/p>\n

1. Finding the Right People<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s absolutely essential to have the right people around you: smart people who can solve problems. These might not even be the founding team but those critical early hires who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get things done. Having a great team is arguably just as important as having a great business idea.<\/p>\n

2. Have a common vision<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a start-up to succeed, your team needs to share a common purpose that will get them (and you) out of bed every single morning. As founders at\u00a0GO1.com, we have always shared the same vision that education and learning is how we are going to change the world.<\/p>\n

3. Avoid analysis paralysis<\/strong><\/p>\n

As founders, we can often \u201coverthink\u201d things, which ends up wasting time. Instead, I often try to urge myself to do more and overthink less. We need to be out there doing things, not just speaking about them. Founders should trust their gut instinct and work to either prove or disprove a hypothesis. My background is as a doctor, so I\u2019m accustomed to the scientific method: you have a hypothesis, try to disprove it, try to break it, if it breaks \u2013 fix it. After all, you\u2019re not going in blind. As a founder, it is highly likely you know your area better than most which is how you identified the opportunity in the first place. You may not know everything and that\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n

4. Nothing happens until a sale is made<\/strong><\/p>\n

In almost any business, you don\u2019t have a business until someone is willing to hand over money for your product or service. Until that point, no matter how good your idea is, without sales, you don\u2019t have a business- just an idea. People talk about an MVP (minimum viable product) being something someone can use. I look at it as something someone will buy.<\/p>\n

5. Know your numbers<\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing we aim to do at\u00a0GO1.com\u00a0is know our unit economics very well. As founders, we need to understand the numbers in our business like the back of our hand: conversion rates, the number of sales\/expected revenue per salesperson, the number of customers a customer success manager can manage, the number of phone calls they can manage in a day and so on. So if you plan to grow, you need to know your numbers. In turn, you will then know what levers to pull to grow. Whether you ask an investor for $1m or $10m, the first question they\u2019ll ask you is; how do you intend to spend the money? If you can explain down to the dollar how you intend to use the money, then you\u2019re in a much better position to get the support you require.<\/p>\n

Other tips and tricks<\/strong><\/p>\n

When it comes to growth-hacks and shortcuts, it\u2019s important to remember that these all ultimately aim to help achieve one clear goal: success at speed. The term \u201cgrowth-hack\u201d gets used in the start-up world for tips and tricks to grow quicker and scale faster, but what is the ultimate shortcut to get to where you want to be more quickly?<\/p>\n

For me, the biggest shortcut starts with finding people who have been there and done that. In almost every start up I\u2019ve spoken to, we all reach a stage where as founders, we can\u2019t do it all ourselves. As the old adage goes, you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know. Instead of trying to figure it out yourself, find people who have already done it and use them as part of your arsenal to grow and scale. Founders should be hiring developers who can develop better than them, sales people who can sell better than them and customer success managers who are better at customer success than they are. The founder\u2019s prerogative is to be good at directing people and bringing everyone together, not doing it all themselves.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to note that the people you need in the early stages of your business may be different to those you need as you begin to scale. As an example, in most organisations, you won\u2019t need a full-time product manager when you start out, but there will be a point where you will need that dedicated specialist with the skillsets, experience and expertise to help scale your product and business. In a sales team, the ability to take a company from zero to a million dollars is different from the ability go from $1m to $5m, or $5m to $100m.<\/p>\n

With this in mind however, we often find hiring is less about getting rid of existing staff and more so about bringing new people into the fold to help enhance the skills of the existing team. For myself people form the backbone of any great company. At\u00a0GO1.com, as a learning company, we are continually aim to grow our skillsets and capabilities. I want to continue work with people with more experience than I have. I want to learn from them and leverage their experience to grow.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: Dynamic Business<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Vu Tran<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

To lay the foundations for future success, the are some key boxes all startups need to tick in the early growth stages, regardless of the nature…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1851,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions\/1851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cruzandco.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}