Is it time for startups to reconsider growth obsession?

So, you’ve built an amazing solution/product/service and landed your first customers — now what? Does your startup have the potential to win market share and achieve true growth?

For years, the advice that founders were getting from business mentors and angel investors was to move things fast and break things — all it takes is to build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and that would be enough to start their own business. Growth hacking became very popular and startups around the world started to emerge at an accelerating rate. According to figures from GEM Global Report, it was estimated that 100 million companies were launched every year worldwide.

However, more recently we have seen that the customer experience economy which shook up many industries and forced them to change, has also had an impact on the way that founders and startups think and plan their strategy.

There is a mindset shift in modern startups as their leaders realize that their focus shouldn’t be to shoot for short term gains but rather to strategize for sustainable growth.

The motto has changed “in order to gain a bigger slice of the pie, you need to make sacrifices”. Therefore, the bottom line now is to build a minimum viable company and not an MVP. By adopting this approach, founders can look at the whole customer lifecycle, aim to elevate the customer experience and lay the foundations for long-term success.

This is something that is also echoed in the way VCs are nowadays evaluating startups as they are not so interested in seeing exponential growth in the near future; but rather look to invest in companies that will blossom ten years from now.

Perhaps it’s time for startups to rein in their obsession to grow too quickly too fast!

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