CHAPTER 15

Startups don’t fail because they lack a product, they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model.

—Steve Blank

Scaling to New Heights

When Steve was working on taking his startup Slipstream from a smaller product to a larger platform for a global marketplace he had to quickly learn about scaling a software company. It was a new term to him in the sense of startups. This company was his second startup, and the first one was services based and was “scaled” based on project backlog and billability. When you hear the term scaling, what comes to mind? Creating a billion dollar enterprise? Getting processes in place so the company can run itself? Having enough people you trust so that you can go on a vacation? These ...

Get The Startup Equation: A Visual Guidebook to Building Your Startup now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.