Understanding Your Startup's Stage of Growth

As described earlier, scalable channels are ideal because they allow you to reach a large number of your ideal customers. And they compound over time. But what we've found from helping over a thousand startups grow is that it's not always realistic to start off with a scalable channel.

Depending on the stage of your startup, you may need to start off with an unscalable channel to begin acquiring customers right away.

As our growth program moves from foundational concepts to tactical execution, it's important to note that the stage of your startup will affect the growth channels you focus on.

Let's explore the four growth stages:

• Launch
• Traction
• Growth
• Scale

Launch

Startup stage: You're just starting out. Maybe you just launched a product.

This is simple. Your focus should be on getting customers to use your product to assess market-product fit.

We advocate for whatever it takes—which often includes doing things that don't scale.

Your initial customers will help you adapt your product so you can pursue traction (and scalable channels).

Traction

Startup stage: You have a flow of customers coming from unscalable channels. Now it’s time to find a scalable channel.

Main focus at the traction stage:

• Learn from your first users. Adapt product as necessary.
• Test scalable channels.

Growth

Startup stage: You're actively acquiring customers using a scalable channel.

At this stage, your startup is starting to show real growth. You have an effective team, and you’re consistently acquiring new customers.

Most, if not all, of these customers are coming through the one scalable channel.

As you continue to grow, you may need to abandon low-leverage unscalable channels to reallocate efforts toward higher-leverage channels that support your primary scalable channel.

Main focus at the growth stage:

• Double down on the single scalable channel that's working to acquire customers.
• Abandon unscalable channels to reallocate resources toward the scalable channel.

Scale

Startup stage: You're approaching the ceiling of your primary scalable channel.

Your startup has matured and is beginning to look like a real business. Various processes are in place that allow you to grow your scalable marketing channel consistently. You likely have a whole team dedicated to your primary scalable acquisition channel.

But you're beginning to notice a plateau in the number of customers you're able to acquire through that scalable channel. All the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and your team is focusing on smaller optimizations.

Those optimizations matter, but if you're going to continue to grow or accelerate your growth, you'll need to implement another scalable acquisition channel.

Focus at the scaling stage:

• Optimize existing scalable acquisition channel.
• Allocate resources toward finding a second scalable channel.
• Invest in multiple unscalable channels that complement your existing and new scalable channel.

Stages of growth summary

Regardless of your stage of growth, focus on the task at hand. If you're still looking for traction, that means being diligent with your growth process and learning as much in as little time as possible.

But once you find a scalable channel that works for you, it's smart to take the leap and go all in on that channel.

It's important to double down on a single scalable channel for as long as you can. It's not easy. It will take time, resources, and effort to get your primary acquisition channel working at full capacity. Once you find one that works, the ROI from continuing to scale that channel will likely outweigh investment in new, unproven channels.

Now we'll narrow the focus of the program to help you choose your first scalable channel.