Start-up Growing Pains

One of my favorite subjects that I enjoy reading about is start-up growing pains and the issues people have when getting the company off the ground. The stories always seem to a follow a theme. Initial success mixed in with “failures” or “disasters” followed by triumph through hard work and perseverance.

At Secfi, we experienced similar issues earlier this year which we like to label as the growing pains of becoming a more mature company.

I’m not going to divulge too much information here, but I do hope to write in more detail about this one day. Long story short is that we lost a relationship with a key business partner earlier this year.

As a small start-up, we rely on a lot of key business relationships and this one proved costly. We lost multiple deals and clients because of this. We had to have a lot of difficult conversations with potential clients. It was a frustrating experience for all parties and during the time it was happening, it was hard to envision how we were going to recover.

Looking back at this experience, I truly believe that losing this relationship is going to be one of the best things that happened for Secfi. Yes, we lost revenue and deals because of this, but it allowed us to take a step back and reevaluate how we were handling all aspects of the business.

We decided we needed to get more defined processes in place. We started diversifying our business relationships to ensure that we have back-up plans and options. It allowed us to focus on product and automation. We had the difficult conversations with clients and learned how to handle these situations.

In theory, we all want our companies and start-ups to go perfectly, but the reality is that is never the case. There will always be hiccups and roadblocks along the journey. The question isn’t whether these growing pains will happen but rather how you respond and handle these situations.