How To Scale Up A Product

Scaling a product is an exciting prospect for any business owner.

When executed at the right time, scaling can offer many benefits, including growing your business’s reach, revenue, and impact.

However, scaling too soon isn’t just a risk in that it can lead to products that offer little value to customers, it can also jeopardise your startup’s overall success, with research finding that over 70% of startups fail due to premature scaling.

In this guide, we’ll offer some useful tips on how to scale up a product to help ensure you scale at the right time.

They include, but are not limited to:

1. Set goals
2. Achieve product market fit
3. Consider a business growth programme
4. Grow and diversify your product team
5. Secure funding
6. Streamline business operations

1. Set Goals

The first tip to scaling a product is to set goals.

It’s important to outline your aspirations and objectives for scaling a product.

Perhaps you’re looking to attract a new market, or maybe your goal is to improve your product’s capabilities.

By setting clear and achievable goals, you’re creating a guide for the business and your teams, helping to ensure that every step aligns with achieving those overarching objectives.

Research has found that over 70% of startups fail due to premature scaling.

2. Achieve Product Market Fit

Achieving product market fit is key to scaling any product.

In short, product market fit ‘refers to how well a product meets the needs of a specific market’.

Steps that go into achieving product market fit before scaling include, but are not limited to:

Verifying demand - This involves ensuring that your product solves a real problem or pain point for your target customer.

Gathering feedback - Make use of customer reviews, surveys, and user testing to better understand your target customer and their needs to generate additional value.

Refining your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) - It’s crucial to make any necessary adjustments before scaling.

Without achieving product market fit, your chances of successfully scaling a product significantly reduce.

3. Consider A Business Growth Programme

The next tip when scaling a product is to consider a business growth programme.

Business growth programmes are designed to offer support at a critical stage and are a fantastic way to meet like-minded entrepreneurs and business owners who are all in a similar position to you.

At Tramshed Tech, we offer a range of business growth programmes.

From pre-start all the way to scaling programmes, we help tech founders build out their teams, develop products and services, and prepare them for growth and scalability.

Get in touch with our team today to find out more about the programmes we offer.

Business growth programmes are designed to offer support at a critical stage

4. Grow & Diversify Your Product Team

Another tip is to diversify your product team. 

As your product expands its functionality and impact, you need the right team onboard to ensure you’re able to execute your vision and strategy.

Scaling a product requires more resources and more team members to absorb capacity.

And, if you’re to stay ahead of marketing demands, you need a diverse team with a range of skillsets to help you stay ahead of the curve and address any challenges head on.

5. Secure Funding

Another tip before you scale up is to secure funding if you need it.

While your startup might have got this far on minimal funds, when you’re looking to scale a product, having the funds to back this becomes essential.

This comes down to the fact that a lack of funding can limit your business and hinder the success of scaling. 

From angel investors to crowdfunding, there are many ways to secure funding to scale a product.

That said, you should aim to have a flexible funding strategy in place.

6. Streamline Business Operations

Last, but not least, one tip to help you scale a product is to streamline your business operations.

Scaling a product demands an array of changes to your business operations, and adapting quickly can prevent more problems from occurring in the future.

How To Streamline Business Operations

From aligning your marketing and sales efforts to investing in tech to speed up customer support, there are many ways to streamline your operations. Other options include automating tasks, identifying bottlenecks, and more.

Streamlining your operations is essential to ensure your business can cope with the influx of new customers when scaling your product.

This, in turn, helps you to empower your other teams, such as the product team, enabling them to do what they do best.

From angel investors to crowdfunding, there are many ways to secure funding to scale a product.

How We Can Help

If you’re looking to grow a community on your journey of scaling up a product, look no further than Tramshed Tech.

We offer a range of different business events where budding entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners alike can connect, reflect, and learn from each other.

To learn more about our events or any of the programmes that we offer, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team today.

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We are Tramshed Tech: a startup ecosystem home to 50+ companies ranging from pre-revenue start-ups to scaling businesses with 600+ registered members from the digital, creative and tech communities. We’re based in Grangetown, Cardiff Central & Newport, Barry and Swansea. 

If you’re interested in joining us at any of our locations, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Written by Jemima for Tramshed Tech.