In the land of start-ups the next step up seems to be becoming a scale-up: a start-up selling an ever increasing number of products to an ever increasing number of customers in an ever increasing number of markets. Moving on up is not the only way to scale though: it might make sense for your business to scale-out, instead of up. Scaling out is the practice where you add complementary activities to your business, also called vertical integration.

One of the companies we work with started out wanting to become “the Uber of trucks” – apart from the fact that Uber hasn’t been making any kind of profit since they started almost 10 years ago, if you’re a founder in an emerging market there is an even more powerful way of growing your business. You can create as much if not more impact by developing a whole eco-system of profitably run businesses around you. 

In the case of the company we work with, the founders teamed up with their suppliers to create stability around supply & demand and hence increase the profitability along the agribusiness eco-system; next on the agenda is to grow the transport eco-system by supporting their drivers to start-up and create businesses for themselves.

SPARK OF THE DAY

Conquering the world can happen in many different ways, just remember that there is only one definition of growth, and that’s yours!