Longmont Start-Up Week: Roadmap to Organic Growth

Entrepreneurs who can solve real problems for customers, and charge money for it, don’t require venture capital to get started in most industries. The secret is to achieve product/market fit – defined by Marc Andreessen (co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz) as “being a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.”

In other words, capital won’t make your company insightful. If you can’t turn $1 into $10, why would you expect to be able to turn $1M into $10M? On the other hand, if you have achieved product/market fit – if you have built a product or service that creates significant customer value in a way that is better than the alternatives – then you can grow your business. And you can do it successfully without an infusion of investor capital.

You just have to develop the business acumen to execute in three critical focus areas: 1) Financial Planning; 2) Sales/Marketing Planning; 3) Operations planning. The fact is, most startups don’t starve. They drown. This happens when the startup is tackling everything and they can’t accomplish what they are good at. Then they are lost. Focus is the oxygen for successful startups. Not only are many startups not focused, they are not focused on the right thing(s). This session will introduce the three crucial focus areas, and place you on the road to success through an ability to fund the growth of your company organically.