You’ve built momentum. Now it’s time to build into your next market while continuing to surprise and delight your current customers. This is where your thoughtful approach to planning and strategy pays off.

Think beyond your product to how you’ll scale the business itself. It’s time to look at new processes, systems and talent strategies that will strengthen your startup and build a world-class team.

Goals of this stage

Release Expanded Functionality

Make product enhancements based on customer feedback

Aggressively Pursue Customers

Demonstrate business model and customer acquisition tactics

Talent Acquisition

Identify and hire key personnel around business and technical functions

Outputs OF THIS STAGE

Expanded Sales/Marketing Materials

Develop more detailed prospecting and product tools including case studies and impact metrics
Read The Blog: When Creating Sales Material, Always Answer The Prospect’s Question, “What’s In It For Me?” »

Refined Pitch deck

Continued updates to the overview of your business opportunity, including more details on traction, additional use cases and other new information

 

Updated Product Roadmap

Enhanced roadmap incorporating customer and
user-generated functionality or additional products

Talent Plan

Workforce plan tied to the operating and growth
strategies that identifies key hires and development plans to support extended growth

Activities & Exercises to help you on your journey

Retain & Upsell Your customers

Leverage your customer success team to ensure product usage and contract renewals
Read The Blog: Growth, Retention & Relationships Make The Dollars Flow »

Expand Your sales

Evaluate expansion into adjacent markets based on customer validation
Read The Blog: When It Comes to Startup Success, The Market Is King »

Grow Your team

Execute strategic hiring plan to build organization capacity
Read The Blog: 5 Personality Traits Of Successful Startup Employees

ActiveLy fundraise

Generate ongoing engagement with potential investors for the next funding round
Read The Blog: For Startups, Value Attracts Funding »

Build new functionality/products

Leverage your product roadmap to add new features or adjacent solutions to expand the product suite
Read The Blog: 5 Things To Think About When Expanding Your MVP’s Features »

Enhance Your internal tools

Build the technology stack to support sales, customer success and operations
Read The Blog: Work Smarter, Not Harder: Implementing & Enhancing Your Internal Tools »

Perform Ongoing financial management & Operational KPIs

Perform a periodic review of financials and KPIs (budget to actuals) to efficiently manage cash
Read The Blog: Understanding And Analyzing Financial And Operational Metrics »

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