Company Building

This article is written by Munira Hussein, a Contributor Author at Startup Istanbul.

The simple steps to the beginning of a company include customer discovery, customer validation, customer creation and company building. Company building is the defining the culture and making sure that you keep it.

A lot of startups, when they start to scale can stall. You can find yourself in a lot of drama. It could be the first employees who were wrong and didn’t fit the culture, or the investors who didn’t get the vision. You can scale out of a garage and keep that culture that got you there in the first place.

The single most important piece of advice when you go through growth is to don’t mess up the culture. The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products.

The biggest challenge for a lot of startups is getting the first investment and getting the first customers on board. Founders have pitch deck, founders deck but often, they forget the employee pitch deck. What does the employee structure look like? What are you offering? What makes you unique as a work place? And then find the right people that match that culture.

Don’t outsource your hiring by using hiring company, make sure there is a culture fit. Use your first employees as a means of spreading the culture to new employees. Propagate the culture across departments. Get your investors on board with your culture and even your customers and partners. When all the people involved in your business share the same visions and objectives, scalability becomes easier.

Have leadership principles in your business. Leaders are owners and think long term. They never say no, that’s not my job. No task is beneath them.  Make customer obsession key to your leadership principles. Leaders start with the customers and work backwards. They care about competition but customer is priority. Whenever you are releasing a new product and there is no excitement or questions when released in the media, think about your product again or reconsider the market.

It is this tiny steps that will make a big impact on how long your company lasts and how successful it becomes. Do not overlook anything and assume that it is not important. Every minute detail is key. It could be the downfall or upgrade of your company. be very keen and observant of what goes on, how things are done and always seek to improve.    

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