Your Startup Seesaw
“A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of “exit.” The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.” -Paul Graham
Startups = High growth business.
This definition is simple but, there is a disconnect many first-time founders have when starting a company.
“It takes investment to grow, and you have to grow to get investment.”
This is your Startup Seesaw.
When you are involved in the seesaw you have to quickly delegate tasks, update investors, and talk to customers, so that your growth is firing on all cylinders.
Everything else we associate with startups including investment will come once you and your team execute your growth goals.
The seesaw is overwhelming to many (including our team at times) but luckily there is a solution:
Communication and organization.
There are amazing tools to accommodate the organization of your teams growth processes.
For example our team organizes our growth with;
Asana -for tasks and delegation
Pipedrive -for our updates on our funnel
Slack -for overall communication about tasks, operations, and the funnel.
Organization can go far keeping your team on the same page, BUT you still have to do the legwork to acquire new customers for close to nothing when you are first starting.
How do I acquire new customers without cash?
- Publish great content
- Social engagement
- Email templates
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Content is king for startups.
Content is free.
One of our favorite startups Buffer mastered content early on. Every non-technical person on their team would publish a blog post daily/weekly.
This allowed them to target their readers through SEO and grow exponentially.
Fact: You would rather read a great article than look at an advertisement.
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Social Engagement is just as free as content and even simpler to execute.
By utilizing Slack we send each other pictures and quotes that our audience will enjoy reading or sharing.
We then share the pictures of events we’re attending or the quotes we hear on all of our channels tracking which drives the most unique.
This is free and organic for the audience.
Fact: Social platforms users would rather have a brand personally comment on their Instagram photo than look at a promoted post/photo.
Start commenting and engaging with people you want in your community.
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Email templates are commonly misunderstood and misused. I use email templates as a foundation to keep everyone sending the most up to date metrics.
When your team is reaching out to a potential new customer or partner, you need to have the most up to date success metrics involved in that email. (i.e. number of current partners, names of current partners, use cases)
Curation is easier than creation.
Your templates are merely a foundation.
Have your templates organized by who you are reaching out to, in Google Drive for your team to update as you acquire new customers/partners.
Again, your templates exist to ensure that everyone is keeping new customers up to date on your most recent growth metrics.
Personalizing each email is non-scalable, BUT a business without any customers isn’t very scalable either.
“One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don’t scale.” — Paul Graham
You absolutely HAVE to personalize each email to get to know your customers and partners.
Treat your customers and partners like you would like to be treated, do your homework on their business.
Fact: Nobody likes getting an email blast from a template email.
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The Startup Seesaw is difficult especially when you are raising money, but it is possible.
Investors want to see a high monthly growth rate, so keep them updated with your growth goals, and completely crush the goals.
Luckily, We can help with that ;)
