Startup Stage 1
  • New business startup is a dream and a passion
  • One or more startup founders working for no salary
  • Business plan outline only
  • No employees
  • No revenue
Startup Stage 2
  • Incorporate a business name
  • Finalizing the business plan
  • Doing product development
  • Search and file patents
  • Startup funding from personal resources, friends, and family
Startup Stage 3
  • Preliminary product available
  • One or more real customers
  • Enough revenue to validate business model
  • Business plan, financial model is the roadmap
  • Spending time presenting to Angel investors
Startup Stage 4
  • Revenue of $5+ million
  • > 20 employees
  • Ready to scale the business to be a market leader
  • Large market opportunity validated
  • Seeking expansion venture capital from professional VCs

Startup Professionals Expertise Startup Development Stages

Startup Professionals Assistance

Development Stage 1

The IDEA Stage is the process of solidifying a business idea into an executable business plan. Typically this is done by one or more of the startup founders for no salary, since funding is unavailable.

The focus at this stage should be market research and gathering data that will allow the startup founders to steer the new business startup into a differentiated market niche where resistance to market entry will be the lowest and sales can be achieved most easily.

Development Stage 2

The STARTUP Stage begins the transition of the company into a legal entity with product development, patent filing and/or, as soon as possible thereafter, a real customer.

A different management style and focus must be implemented. This first shift in style is needed to begin following a plan, and dealing with other complexities that start to build with your product development efforts. It is not likely that you really have your "secret sauce" down yet, as you are still experimenting with what the market and customers want, how much they will pay for it and how to get to the customer for an efficient sales and marketing plan and process that can generate a profit.

Development Stage 3

The FUNDING Stage has arrived when it is clear there is an established revenue and/or customer base. At this point the business is arguably sustainable with a proven value proposition to customers, pricing and both sales and operations processes that work, albeit not necessarily very efficiently.

The business is likely not yet profitable, but there is a clear path to profitability with far fewer unknowns and big risks. There is still a lot to learn and many processes to optimize, and the management is usually still stretched too far executing, instead of managing.

Development Stage 4

The GROWTH Stage is where the business is scaled - This is achieved when the company really has defined a business model that works, and expands this model to address the large opportunity, outside the local geography, nationally, or globally.

At this stage you have proven that $X invested in sales and marketing will generate $Y revenue and profit. So expansion can be done with little risk. With well documented proof of this you can usually attract large amounts of capital easily. It also becomes relatively easy to see exactly what is needed to reach a large size company and how large you can get.

During Stage 4 the management style and focus must once again change. Often “professional management” is brought in to replace founders who can't adjust to this needed transition from an entrepreneurial high speed and risk style, to one of planning, management and fine-tuning of operations.