Growth in Early-Stage VS Scale-Up đ„
Whatâs the best option for you?
Hi there đ Welcome to this new edition of The Growth Mind!
I talk every 2 weeks about Growth topics, inspired by the worldâs leading scale-ups.
In todayâs article, we deep dive into the main differences between working on Growth in an Early-Stage Startup VS in a Scale-up đ„
Working on Growth in an Early-stage startup or in a Scale-up are two different jobs. The question is: which situation best suits your profile and aspirations?
Iâve personally worked on Growth both in early-stage startups and now at BlaBlaCar which is a Scale-up. And I can tell you the roles are really not the same.
Whether you're navigating your career path, shaping your skill set, or simply aiming to understand the diverse landscape of growth roles, grasping these differences is key.
This article aims to help you align your growth strategies and career aspirations with the right stage of a company's journey. Letâs go!
Letâs first define what I call Early-stage Startup and Scale-up in this article:
đŁ Early-stage startup
I define an early-stage startup as a company that has found its product/market fit, and already has proven traction. But where everything related to growth needs to be properly built. Itâs generally a company between 10 to 30 people, where youâll be the first hire working on Growth.
đ Scale-up
I define a scale-up as a company that reached significant success in its domestic market and is in a phase of expansion through the launch of new countries and/or products. Itâs a company generally having +200 employees (up to many more), where there are one or multiple teams dedicated to growth.
1# Scope and responsibilities đ
In Early-Stage, the scope tends to be broad and focuses on multiple steps of the user experience:
Your scope can include the launch of new acquisition channels, working on a revamped onboarding, creating lifecycle CRM sequences, or even iterating on pricing.
The metrics you look at are diverse and should reflect the entire business growth health.
But while the scope is broad, is necessary to not work on everything at the same time and focus on projects/metrics to improve during a specific period of time.
The focus should, in 90% of cases, first be on increasing activation and engagement before trying to scale acquisition.
In Scale-up, the scope is more narrow and youâll likely work on a specific part of the user experience
Some Growth people in scale-ups tend to have a specialization. Depending on the focus of your team, you can work on acquisition, activation & retention, or monetization.
Having a narrow scope means youâre accountable for a specific metric (eg. new active users) and should focus 100% of your time trying to increase it. More focus on a specific metric means youâll be able to go deeper in your strategies to increase it than if you were in early-stage.
But in some cases, you can work as the growth manager of a specific country or a specific product (if the company is multi-products), making the job sometimes more like something youâll do in early-stage but with more resources (human and financial).
In my example, Iâm working at BlaBlaCar on Growth for Western Europe countries. I work mainly on Carpool, with a strong focus on pricing as a growth lever. But I also work on launching brand-new products or helping the marketplace grow by working on other growth projects. So the scope is quite broad.
2# Growth strategy and execution đŁïž
In Early-stage, strategies are short-term oriented (3 to 6 months) - Focus is on fast iterations
With a lot of uncertainty and few past learnings, executing fast and experimenting is key to gathering knowledge on whatâs working or not. That will be the foundation of your growth playbook.
Growth roadmaps are generally built on a 3 to 6-month short-term vision. Trying to make plans further in the future is useless because growth plans will be adjusted often depending on the learnings gathered.
You should be open to failure, as a guarantee of success doesnât exist. Strategies can evolve fast based on direct user feedback.
In Scale-up, strategies are longer term and less risky (12 to 24 months) - Focus is on improvements & some big bets
With less uncertainty and more learning thanks to past experiments, strategies and experiments are generally guided by a documented growth playbook and backed by data. You know whatâs working, and whatâs not.
Roadmaps are built for one year in most cases, but some projects can involve a longer-term vision (eg. launching a new product) and involve a lot of stakeholders.
The key when building growth strategies in scale-ups is to have a good balance between small incremental improvements, which are not risky, and some big bets that are riskier but can unlock new growth opportunities.
In both cases, a common trap when building growth strategies is to try to do everything at the same time, but prioritization is key. Yes to fast iterations on some channels or tactics, but no to launching everything at the same time. The focus should be on the most impactful actions.
3# Team dynamics đ€
In Early-stage, youâre working as a multi-skilled lone wolf
Small startups tend to have only one person 100% dedicated to Growth at the beginning, meaning youâre on your own. However, CEOs are generally pretty involved at this stage in defining the growth strategy.
Collaboration with other teams is key, even if youâre in a small startup. Having engineering people willing to help you build your experiments is essential.
This setup gives you more freedom on your strategy, but less help and support to execute it. Itâs a great way to learn how to grow by yourself, but it needs self-discipline.
In Scale-up, youâre being part of a larger team with strong expertises
Scale-ups have built one or more teams dedicated to growth, collaborating with other teams inside the company. Those teams can be composed of different profiles (marketers, product managers, engineers) with their areas of expertise.
For some large growth projects, you can easily have +10 people involved in the delivery of a project, meaning stakeholder management is a key competency.
This setup makes you more dependent on other people but also brings more expertise to deliver complex projects. Itâs a great opportunity to learn from different experts.
4# Ressources đ°
In Early-stage, ressources are smaller, frugality is key
Small startups have less budget than bigger ones, but also less human resources. You donât have an expert for each task.
To succeed in such an environment, knowing how to drive impact with small resources is a key skill. But thatâs also a stage where you can be ready to drive traction at a high cost and start optimizing for profitability after. It depends on the company model and strategy.
In Scale-up, resources are bigger (but not unlimited)
Scale-ups have a large marketing budget and many employees who can work on the growth strategy delivery. A lot of specialists can help you deliver.
However, budget and bandwidth are of course not infinite, especially in the current context where the vast majority of scale-ups no longer adopt a âgrowth at all costâ strategy, having profitability as a key objective.
5# Key skills needed đ
In Early-stage, seek for adaptability and a large cross-functional skills palette
In an uncertain environment, where you work solo on growth, itâs crucial to be able to do a bit of everything, without necessarily being a specialist. For the 0 to 1 or even the 1 to 10 phases, you donât need it.
A large palette of skills in marketing, product, and design will make you able to ship growth tactics independently over the whole funnel.
Being able to execute fast and without guidance is key too.
In Scale-up, seek for either being a specialist or a generalist
Itâs common in scale-ups to have people working on growth specialized in one specific channel, who are very good at pushing tactics to their maximum.
But you also have more generalist profiles similar to the ones you find in smaller startups (Iâm more on this side for example). It depends on the company organization and your aspirations.
One different thing is the stakeholder/project management skills. Growth projects include a lot of people in large scale-ups, meaning itâs a key competency to master to perform, especially if youâre a generalist who needs the help of specialists.
Wrap-up â
When working on Growth, both Early-stage startups and Scale-ups have their strengths, but also their defaults.
If youâre looking for a risky environment where youâll kickstart a growth engine from the beginning, an early-stage startup will probably best suit your goal.
If youâre looking to be part of a team with people having strong expertise and large resources, within a more structured environment, then scale-ups are probably the best way to go for.
But keep in mind those are generic explanations that can be impacted by many elements: the company culture, the manager, the productâŠAnd much more.
I personally loved working on Growth in early-stage, I learned a ton of things. But I also love working now in a scale-up. Going into one type of company does not set boundaries to move to another stage.
Loved it especially team dynamics
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