How to Build a Scaling Technology Venture
One day Zulfer asked me, Shayanthan what is your take from PickMe. Without thinking too much I responded him that, Build a Scaling Technology Venture is my primary take from PickMe. Yes indeed, it was a valuable learning I got in home land after I return from Singapore in 2015.
Start-up Tech
In-order to understand what is Scaling Technology Venture, first we should know what is Start-up Tech aka Launching Technology. Start-up tech is the technology and process involved during the early stage in a product based start-up company to build and create traction and to reach product market-fit. During this period the start-up team makes quick (and dirty) technology directions to create the traction and capture the market fast. Once the traction is proven and the product market-fit is reached, team can’t take direction as they did during the start-up phase.
Growth vs Scale
When the order of magnitude of demand hits the business, team need to focus on the scaling of tech. If your business in ‘Growth’ stage which means, you are adding resources at the same rate that the business getting revenue, you don’t need to much worry about the technology part of it. But if you are in the “Scaling” phase, which means your are getting revenue or demand at an exponential rate while you are only adding resources at an incremental rate, you need to be very serious about the scaling of tech. So, what is Scaling Technology Venture, how to build a Scaling Technology Venture?
Scaling Technology Venture
When start-up reach to a stage to scale their own tech to handle the scale of the demand, is known as Scaling Technology Venture.
Scalable System + Scalable Team (People) + Scaling Processes = Scalable Tech
We have seen rapid scale in several technology ventures in the world and they have catalyzed significant changes in the world social and economic growth. Experiencing that world class challenge in a short period of time in home land is really fortunate and valuable.
Organizing Scaling Technology Venture is hard. We need to focus on three main elements in the organization: Scalable System, Scalable Team (People) and Scaling Processes. Building a Scalable System with a Scalable Team and imposing Scalable Processes to make sure systems and people are not falling apart and help to scale seamlessly, is a real challenge and fun as well.
Couple of weeks before I delivered a public lecture on “Build a Scaling Technology Venture”, organised by IESL — Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka, and shared my experience with several young people about how to organize teams and leverage the technology and processes to build a Scaling Technology Venture.
In that presentation I navigated through the practical experiences on above three elements of a Scaling Technology Venture. Mainly, how we made choices when we have to make Strategy Formulation, Culture, Team Structure, Product Development and Quality Control to build Scalable System, Scalable Team and Scaling Processes.
If you are preparing to scale your own technology venture, or would like to do a start-up with the aim to bring it as a Scaling Technology Venture in future, I believe our experience is really worth for you to read through.
You can download the presentation here. If you have any question, please write to me.
