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For any organization to understand the culture it needs to understand the human element first. businesses tend to grow gradually over the course of a year, where startups have way more pressure and have to achieve similar growth in a shorter period of time.

The truth is that unicorn startups are shining, many awesome products you haven’t heard still in the works. Although they will not score a Facebook scale, their success is all about the product.

“The creation of a product is one thing and achieving growth it’s a totally different story.”

What are the secrets and the impacts on company growth? Here you have some key points about startup growth from a totally different angle.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” — Benjamin Frankling

Empathy

“One of the strengths of emerging startups is their ability to move quickly,” including testing out new concepts such as evolving support channels. The ability to communicate with an evolving userbase through newer channels such as SMS, email, or social media, is extremely important.

Empathy, however, is probably the most overlooked aspect of their support. At the end of the day training your customer care associates on new platforms or technology is easy, but it’s the empathy with the end-user that is much more challenging to train. “Too often many leaders rush ahead and think about the technology first and forget the humanity,” (humans supporting humans).

A bad customer experience can end a relationship, no matter how neat and cool the product or service is.

Making it happen

Almost every startup out there, more or less, refers to some kind of strategy. Most of them use the same set of marketing tools. The more I think about it, the more clear it is to me. “It’s not about strategy it’s about execution.”

Here’s why.

Where mediocre strategy execution still struggles to find the right marketing channel, effective ones already tries to scale the one that seems to work. When the first try to implement the latest growth hack, the second one tries to improve the existing one.

The proper execution distinguishes between good and awesome.

Mission first

If you think that companies exist to earn money, you are fundamentally wrong. They are being created to fulfill a specific demand that exists on a market. Of course, a company has to earn money. I don’t know any single person who starts a company, because they have too much free time. Focusing mostly on money creates a very dangerous situation.

When you concentrate on money, you start to pursue more and more sales. “Selling the product is one thing, but it doesn’t define your company’s growth strategy. Solving other people’s problems does.”

Focus on people

“Focusing on people combines attributes like communication, inclusiveness, and empathy.”

Every great leader needs to focus relentlessly on both taking great care of his or her people and building a strong, financially stable business. Focus solely on numbers and pretty soon you don’t have any people left (or at least not any good ones). So, the goal is this: “People first”.

People are the most valuable and most expensive asset of your company at the same time. No matter how many tools you will decide to acquire, they won’t solve your problems. People will.

Together is better

Growth is achieved by collaborating with your team and solving the issues that rise together.

The same as with creativity and innovation, growth isn’t achieved by a single person. Don’t fall into the myth of a lone genius.

Top takeaways

The reason most companies don’t find their footing until year four and beyond is because it takes that long before every aspect of the business has been shaped, customer acquisition, product development, brand message, management team, culture, and the list goes on. All of these things take lots of iterations to get right, and that just takes time.

“Building a startup isn’t just building a company, it’s an emotional marathon that happens to revolve around business milestones.”

While you’re surely going to have the insight and decision-making to be able to build a great company, it really comes down to the emotional stability to see it through. There’s no shortcut and that’s OK.

For a company to grow, it first must understand the components that actually drive the growth of its value.

The way to succeed in a startup is not to be an expert on startups, but to be an expert on your users and the problem you’re solving for them. — Paul Graham