Acceleration (6)

Purpose

“The Acceleration stage (6), sometimes referred to as Customer Creation, is the point where the balance tips from exploration to execution. The kid is an adolescent now. Its experimentation and learning are now more focused on how to be successful in the future.

Once your startup has done all the work of validating Product/Market Fit, it is easy for competitors to simply copy what you’re doing. This means that your business has to shift into a higher gear. From this stage onward, you try all you can to prevent being outcompeted, which is a common reason for business failure.

A business model that is scaling up has its focus on growth in revenue and market share. It has found a consistent source of income but it may still struggle to make it sustainable and cash-flow positive. The challenge for the business is to reach more and more customers with a product that works while not overreaching what the business is capable of handling. Additional funding is likely needed while scaling, which is then often referred to as a Series B round.

For business leaders at this level, it is a challenge to deal with a whole new range of demands that require their attention, which includes recruitment, competition, partnerships, and organizational culture. The business replaces its informal learning team with a more formal structure, possibly with Sales and Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, and a bunch of executives managing everything. A lot of attention goes into optimizing, delegating, automating, evolving, and outsourcing the business processes.

At some point at this adolescent level, we say that the kid has become a young adult and therefore it gets the same rights and duties as the other adults in the family. It is now expected to play the rest of the game as a grown-up.”