Five Crucial Stages That All Startups Hit and How to Handle Them

Every startup is different, but there are certain stages that all startups hit during their lifetimes.

Understanding these stages and knowing how to handle them is important for any entrepreneur hoping to turn their startup from the seed of an idea into a successful company.

The Five Startup Stages You Should Understand and Tips for Handling Them

1. Solving a Problem (Ideation Stage)
2. Developing an MVP (Early Stage)
3. Going to Market (Launch Stage)
4. Scaling (Growth Stage)
5. Maturity (Exit Stage)

1. Solving a Problem (Ideation Stage)

The very first stage for any startup is the problem-solving stage, or the ideation stage.

During this time, the startup founder(s) must identify a problem they wish to solve and ideate on different ways to solve it, which will allow them to start building a solution in the form of a product or service.

In order to successfully identify a problem that needs solving and come up with potential solutions, it’s of the utmost importance to do the following:

• Brainstorm ideas
• Evaluate ideas
• Conduct market research
• Discuss ideas with others
• Pick one idea to work on

2. Developing an MVP (Early Stage)

After you’ve decided on an idea for your startup, it’s time to actually start building on it, meaning you need to develop a minimum viable product (MVP).

An MVP is the first working version of your solution, which has sufficient features and functionality to be usable by early users who can test it and provide feedback.

MVPs essentially help you validate your idea and further ideate on it to build a strong solution to the problem you want to solve before you fully go to market.

For startup founders that plan to seek venture capital funding, having an MVP is usually an important part of securing funding from VC firms or angel investors.

When you’re building an MVP, unless you’re developing it all on your own, you’re going to need to collaborate and communicate efficiently with other team members.

For this, it’s important to make sure you have the right communication and collaboration tools at hand, such as the Spike team communication app. Such tools allow you to efficiently work together with your team as you build your MVP.

3. Going to Market (Launch Stage)

The next startup stage after building an MVP is the launch stage, which is when you fully enter the market with your solution and make it available to the general public (or whoever your target market is).

There’s far more to this stage than just releasing a product and marketing it to make sales — startup founders need to work hard during the launch stage to find the right product-market fit.

This means continuing to test, research, and receive feedback in order to build new features and improvements into your solution.

One of the best ways to measure product-market fit during this stage is to monitor customer retention.

4. Scaling (Growth Stage)

If your startup’s solution works and is gaining customers, and existing customers are continuing to use it, you’ve found a good product-market fit for the time being and your startup can start to scale.

This next stage of a startup’s life cycle is also known as the growth stage or the expansion stage, and it’s when you need to start thinking about ways to scale your business model to compete with larger competitors and increase profitability.

A word of warning: many startups try to scale too soon, so be absolutely sure your business model is working before you try to grow your business.

Here are some tips for tackling the startup growth stage:

• Seek more VC funding
• Study what your competitors are doing
• Bring in outside experts to consult you
• Consider new markets to enter (different geographic areas or target audiences)
• Hire more team members
• Add more features, products, or services
• Collaborate with companies
• Don’t stop trying to find product-market fit (it’s an ongoing process)

5. Maturity (Exit Stage)

If a startup has a good foothold in the market, has strong customer retention, has expanded, and is making a good profit, it is starting to become a mature company.

For most startup founders, this is when they start thinking about an exit strategy.

One of the most popular exit strategies for mature startups is to get acquired, meaning bought by a bigger company.

For very large, profitable companies, another exit strategy is to go public on the stock markets through an initial public offering (IPO).

If you’re a startup founder in the exit stage, it’s important to think hard about what you want to do next and what you want to prioritize in your life.

For instance, let’s say you have another startup idea that’s been on your mind for a while now — you may decide that an acquisition deal is best for your company, as it would allow you to hand over the reins to someone else and get to work on the next big thing.

On the other hand, if you have no intention of stepping down from leading your company, you might try to take it public, so you could receive new funding in the form of public stock investments and continue to grow your company and make it even more profitable.

Talking to other startup founders who have reached maturity with their companies can be very helpful during this stage.

From Pre-seed to Late Stage Funding - Sources of Every Funding Stage

As the business grows, it requires funding for expansions and research. There are different stages of funding that respond to the different needs of a growing business.

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