svc2uk 2013 tips for scaling up your business
TRANSCRIPT
Sherry CoutuSVC2UK
“Scaling up our innovative companies is probably the single most important lever we have in terms of GDP Growth in the UK economy.”
SVC2UK supports companies to scale up.
This presentation provides the context behind this focus and 12 observations drawn from the annual SVC2UK summit in 2013 where iconic entrepreneurs from US and Europe shared their experiences from scaling successful businesses themselves.
So first the significance of entrepreneurial companies to our economy….
40Kauffman report reported that the average founder age of the 500
fastest growing companies in the US was 40.
This is also the percentage of the US GDP that is generated by companies that did not exist 30 years ago.
25 %
25 % of the growth in GDP came from technology companies in 2012
100 %
100% of new net jobs in the US come from companies less than 5 years old (Kauffman Foundation 2009)
6 %
The vital 6 percent report (Nesta report) showed that 6% of all SMEs produced 54% of jobs in the UK over the past 7 years
54%
54% of all jobs are created by these 6% of firms.
1,300,0002,400,000
1.3m jobs of the total 2.4m jobs were created by angels / VCs…(in the last 7 years)
2.6 jobs created for
Every 1 job lost
Internet matters: The Net’s sweeping impact on growth, jobs, and prosperityMckinsey May 2011
£ 100 billion7.2 %
In 2009, the Internet contributed an estimated £ 100 billion,or 7.2 % of GDP to the UK economy…
BCG Connected Kingdom Report, Oct 2010
This share is larger
than the UK’s
Construction,
Transportation or
Utilities
industries
12 Lessons from SVC2UK 2013
Focus Relentlessly
“Experimentation is key, but don’t try to run lots of experiments in parallel”
SVC2UK 2013 mentor
Beware ofPremature Scaling
“Think like a startup even as you scale up”
Ketan Kothari, Edmodo
LearnLeadership for Scale
“Building a startup is exciting,but scaling up means being a greater distance from what brought you in”
Stanley Yang, Neurosky
Choose a big enough problem
“Founders need an authentic desire to solve a real problem”
Mohsen Moazami, Columbus Nova Technology Partners
Embed yourself inthe Right Network
“Building an exceptional network is the prime task of an aspiring scale-up founder”
Renaud Visage, Eventbrite
Recruit people who have done it before
“You must hire people who have done it before. There is no substitute”
Megan Smith, Google X
Hire for tomorrow,Not for today
“You will outgrow your people.”
Renaud Visage, Eventbrite
Embrace Diversity
“You need a diverse team –not three MBAs, of course, but probably not three engineers either!”
Michael Baum, FOUNDER.org
Nurture Company Culture
“Culture is what remains in the room when the founder leaves it”
SVC2UK 2013 Mentor
Build systems that scale
“Planning for scale is about anticipating where you’ll be in 12 months and building the organisation you’ll need then now. Everything needs to be systematised!”
Mike Shepherd, GrowthPoint Technology Partners
Test product / market fit
“You can test all your key assumptions in a purely analogue fashion, without any tech. You can test, learn, iterate, repeat hyper-locally even if the problem is global.
The key is repeatability”
Julie Hanna, Kiva
Take the right kind of money…at the right time
“Just as there has to be chemistry between foundersthere must be chemistry between founders and investors.”
Ash Patel, Morado Capital Ventures
Sherry [email protected]
RECOMMENDED READING:
http://www.svc2uk.com/wp-content/uploads/The-art-of-scaling-gracefully.pdf
http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/assets/features/siding_with_the_angels