Finding new sources of growth — as an established, high tech business matures — often requires out-of-the-ordinary, creative thinking. It can have big pay offs.
Who is our Growth Accelerant service for?
Leaders of technology-based businesses who would like to find a way to grow faster, and seek sources of growth based on new markets; new products; or creative acquisitions.
What challenge does this service address?
There comes a time in the life of many high-tech ventures (often as revenues reach $50-100M) when growth starts to slow significantly. This may occur because the opportunity the venture was formed to attack is not huge enough to support continued rapid growth, or because the initial products have become less competitive over time, or because competition has heated up.
Particularly for companies that are publicly listed, this is a difficult stage in the company’s life cycle. The market expects continued growth, and harshly penalizes failure to live up to that expectation. Because of compliance costs and the dearth of analysts covering such small public companies, there are large incentives to grow as rapidly as possible to at least the $500 million revenue mark.
Options facing the management team in this situation include:
- seeking new opportunities for growth, beyond the core business around which the company is currently organized;
- selling the business; or
- managing the business differently (e.g. for cashflow instead of for growth).
While seeking new opportunities for growth seems particularly tempting, the skills for doing that are often not among the core competencies of companies at this intermediate stage of growth.
Objectives
To help an established, high-tech business increase enterprise value — significantly faster than the rate at which the core business is currently growing.
Our approach
Our approach involves an unusual blend of analysis, strategic advice, and roll-up-the-sleeves, hands-on execution.
Working closely with the management team, these engagements are intensive, hands-on projects, typically lasting for months, focused on accomplishing specific business objectives.
We look for ways to leverage some of the company’s core technical assets, or customer footprint, or other assets, so as to expand into new areas of business that offer the potential for significant, incremental, long term growth. We seek fields in which the business should have significant competitive advantage.
To take the next step
- Resources: Articles & videos of talks illustrating our approach to problems.
- Contact Us: to discuss your company, or ask questions about how we work.