For months, your team has been working at a breakneck pace to build and refine your product idea, with feedback from early adopters. It’s going well, but it’s been so. Much. Work. The team is in a dual state of exhaustion and excitement. User retention is growing. You’ve built a product that you’re sure people will love. Investors are taking notice and conversations are heading toward funding for the next stage. Success is on the horizon. It's so close you can feel it.

If this sounds like you, then congratulations! You’ve overcome major hurdles to get to this point. For many, the moment you get that funding starts a new clock: new features, new hires, new users. The next stage of growth. 

But have you really thought about what will happen when you double or triple your team size to meet growth demands? Do you have the right team now to support this growth? The right infrastructure? The right culture? 

Can your company successfully scale? 

For early stage startups, warning signs pop up along the way but are often ignored. We say things like “culture doesn’t drive acquisition,” “it’s not important today,” or “we’ll deal with it when we get there.”

I’ve watched startups churn their way through the transition between early-stage to growth stage. The ones that avoid long-term, critical missteps are the ones that start planning for their growth early and deliberately. They bet on their own success by prioritizing the work that will ensure the company is built to scale. 

If you’ve reached this important inflection point in the growth of your startup, pay attention to these warning signs that you may not be ready to scale:

                    When people talk about startups, they often focus more on the challenges early-stage startups face — building the MVP, achieving product market fit, and securing investor funding. Understandable, right? Without passing this stage, there is no future, so there is good reason to stay focused on the here and now. 

                    But this tunnel vision can make the transition from seed to scale that much more painful and put even the greatest ideas at risk of failure. Data from the Small Business Administration shows that the failure rate of startups is around 90%, with 21.5% of startups failing in the first year, 30% in the second year, 50% in the fifth year, and 70% in their 10th year. 

                    Startups face a higher risk of failure as they grow. Don’t let short-sighted focus cause your team to lose sight of the long-term vision: a sustainable product and company that continues to thrive well beyond MVP. 

                    Summer Lamson is the chief services officer at DockYard, a digital product consultancy focused on helping innovative companies scale through the nexus of technology and design.



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