Why Has My Startup Slowed Down?

Startups that begin to experience success are accustomed to things moving quickly. They can iterate quickly, make decisions quickly, and grow quickly. Of course, CEOs can get so accustomed to everything happening so fast that they are confused when things start to slow down, and nothing is happening.

Often, the problem can be wanting to do too much. After finding product-market-fit and experiencing some success, it’s natural for startups to want to launch a new product or move into a new geography or go after new segments. This is often the reason why things have slowed down.

Rather than focus on things that are new, startups that want to keep growing quickly should be focused on their core. CEOs need to look at their core product, geography, segment, and channel because this is what a startup does best and should be the strongest. The key question here is what is your market share of the core of your business?

If you don’t know the market share of your core because you don’t measure that, it’s likely a problem. Another problem is if your market share is less than 1%. If the core, meaning the thing you do best, can’t get beyond 1% market share, you have no business trying to expand into new products, geographies, and segments. This is why things have slowed down and become stagnant.

In addition to not being ready for this next phase, adding more growth levers like new products, channels, segments, and geographies is just going to make things more complex. This will take away your agility, which is the main competitive advantage that startups have over more established competitors. In other words, trying to do too much is what’s slowing down your startup.

If you’ve only started to dip your toes into your core with less than 1% of market share, it’s too soon to move onto other things and new ventures. Instead, wait until you’ve made a splash and captured a large market share with the core of your business before branching out. This will help to give you the cash, resources, pricing power, and (perhaps most importantly) confidence to expand into new geographies or segments or explore new products. 

Ultimately, this is what’s going to get you to your total addressable market. But everything must be done step by step. Wanting to do too much too soon is what could be slowing down your startup. Keeping the focus on your core is what will help you to keep growing and maintain the speed and momentum you’ve built.