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Toolkit: The Go-to Source for Tips and To-Dos Entrepreneurs –Growth Stage

Toolkit: The Go-to Source for Tips and To-Dos Entrepreneurs –Growth Stage

Rev1’s Entrepreneur Toolkit is a handy, easy-to-use collection of practical tips and tools curated especially for entrepreneurs and founding teams. Think of the Toolkit as an online extension of the company-building instruction delivered in Rev1’s investor startup studio.

Using the language of entrepreneurship, the Toolkit matches milestones, risks, and critical success factors to each stage of startup growth. These blogs teach entrepreneurs what to do and how to do it.

Growth Stage Blogs – Read One a Day for Two Weeks and See How Much You Learn!
Mitigate Risk · Achieve Milestones · Intentional Networking ·  Next Steps

For startups in the growth stage, success is all about execution. You have established the business and built a credible solution. Your founding team is validating the marketing concept and the value proposition of your solution with early paying customers. The job ahead is to prove that you can do what you said you could do with the boundaries of the business plan.

Growth is fun, full of surprises, and plenty of plain hard work. Here are a dozen tips for Growth Stage companies that you can use every day.

Mitigate Growth Stage Risk –  Refine Product Features. Mind the Competition. Conserve Resources.
  1. Tool: Analyzing Your Competitors, Part 1: Competitive Analysis – Performing an ongoing, full review of the competition is critical to any startup’s success. This is not “once and done.” You will be performing a competitive analysis of the life of your company. Here’s the tool.
  2. Tool: Analyzing Your Competitors, Part 2: Feature Canvas – A feature canvas is a way to organize all the features that you and your competition have. Use it to identify the strengths, weaknesses, and path of potential of your product.
  3. 5 Expert Tips for Protecting Your Intellectual Property – Intellectual property (IP) rights are critically important assets to any technology company. Identifying and legally protecting IP is a complex process that requires vigilance for the company’s life.
Growth Stage Milestones – Culture. Sales and Distribution. Scalability.
  1. CEO Insights on Building the Culture You Want in Your Startup: The Parable of the Blue Chair – The impetus for this blog is our conversation with Eric Whitney, founder and CEO of Chalkboard and Developer of Kandoop. We call this blog the parable of the blue chair. Enjoy!
  1. Building Culture – Startup CEOs Share Insights and Experience –  When it comes to culture, successful founders are intentional from day one. Here are thought starters from three Rev1 CEOs.
  2. Build a High-Growth Sales Team – MentorcliQ Co-founder and CEO Phil George shares tips on how to build a sales pipeline and a sales organization to create this level of startup growth. With a customer base of hundreds of companies, MentorcliQ closed an over-$80 million growth investment from PSG that drew attention nationwide. 
  1. The Heartbreak of Category Three – No business will always perform up to all expectations. However, missed revenue forecasts are the warning bells for Category Three—slowing deals, dissatisfied customers, and diminishing resources. Here’s how to throw on the brakes.
 Growth Stage Networking – Inventors. Mentors.
  1. The Top 10 Things to Never Say in An Investor Pitch – Your slide deck is ready. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with statements sure to tank any investor pitch. 
  1. How to Connect with Investors and Choose the Right One – Benefit from these timeless mentoring tips from Ray Shealy, one of Ohio’s leading investors and serial entrepreneurs.
  2. 4 Tips to Cultivate Winning Menor Relationships – Rev1 encouraged a connection between Larson and Vasil Hlinka, CEO of AwareAbility Technologies; they’ve been building a company together for the last six years. They listen to each other and iterate. They don’t duplicate effort. They leverage their relationship. Learn from their advice.
Next Steps –
  1. 5 Sticky Customer Situations and How to Deal with Them – Engaging early adopters can be like grabbing the proverbial tiger by the tail. Enduring customer relationships are two-way. It’s your job to represent the customers, but not at the expense of your company.
  2. Artificial Intelligence: 5 Ideas for Entrepreneurs to Consider as They Build Great Companies – AI will affect us all. Every startup needs a plan.

Rev1 Ventures can help your company progress from growth to scale. Contact us to learn more.