Is your company a startup or not? It’s a bit more complicated than it seems.

Even businesses with 300+ employees can be startups.

According to the Kauffman Index of Startup Activity, in 2021, there were 4.4 million new business applications in the US alone, marking a record high. This surge in entrepreneurship and startups is indicative of the growing interest in this area.

Not all new businesses are startups, and not all startups are new businesses. Not all small companies are startups, and not all startups are small companies. Not all new businesses are small companies, and not all small companies are…

In general, whether to call yourself a startup or not is your choice. However, when we talk about startups, we mean companies that:

• Are in the process of stabilizing their business and preparing for scaling up.
• Plan to attract investments or go public.
• Grew quickly since their founding and are now hitting a speed ceiling and need changes to regain speed.
• Have come up with a new way to make money and are not yet global.

If at least one of these points applies to you, you can consider yourself a startup.

Startups face unique challenges such as limited resources, lack of brand recognition, and high competition. However, they also have the advantage of being agile and able to pivot quickly to adapt to changing market conditions. To fuel their growth, startups often rely on external funding, with venture capital being a popular source of investment. In 2021, global venture capital funding reached a record $288 billion, indicating strong investor interest in startups.

Scaling up is one of the biggest problems for businesses, especially startups. It is complicated by the huge (and growing!) pace of market development in 2023.

The global startup economy is valued at $3 trillion, with the US, China, and India being the top three countries with the highest number of startups. However, startups often struggle with limited resources and lack of brand recognition, making it challenging to break into established markets.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on startups, with many struggling to survive due to reduced funding and disrupted supply chains. However, it has also created new opportunities for startups in areas such as remote work and e-commerce.

In the past, it was necessary to be fast. Then you had to be faster than your yesterday self, and now you need to be faster than tomorrow’s competitors.

Business tasks are becoming increasingly unrealistic, and that is precisely why successful startups are called unicorns, not megabrains or superrobots.

The term “unicorn” refers to a startup that has reached a valuation of $1 billion or more. As of 2021, there were over 800 unicorns worldwide, with the majority being in the technology sector.

But let’s figure out what scaling up is and who needs it.

Planet Earth is a big market where the rules are set by the merchants with the biggest stalls. A new merchant, even if their product is a crazy innovation that will change millions of lives, must first get into the field of vision of buyers. Otherwise, they will be lost. That’s how ChatGPT, Uber, Tesla, and all the other successful startups of the decade would have been lost.

If you don’t get into the field of vision, you have no chance. You can count on customers from your street, so to speak, but no more. But if you get into the field of vision and push established rules out of the consumer information field, your idea will have a chance to conquer the world.

Unfortunately, getting into the information field through the main door — communication and advertising — is very expensive. We’ll cover marketing for startups in the next publications but know that a minute of the world’s attention is worth more than all the unicorns of the last decade.

Startups are left with only branding — stable work, word-of-mouth expansion and smooth scaling that “automatically” brings people in. This means that people will talk about you to each other if you do good work, and if you are ready for rapid scaling, you will not lose your business when hundreds and thousands of customers come to you.

Liked this piece of content? You may want to look through JetSoftPro blog post to have a general vision of marketing for startups.