创业公司规模化道路上的四条拦路虎

    2012年伊始，不少创业公司的高管都把自己手里的那本《精益创业》（Lean Start-Up）塞回了书架，仰面朝天，为自己将要面对一系列全新的挑战而唏嘘不已。虽然现在讨论如何为初出茅庐的创业公司找到产品／市场匹配度的建议铺天盖地，但其中却暗含着一条奸诈的小秘密：实现适销对路之际，难题才真正开始。其难点就在于规模化。

    橱窗公司打拼了三四年后，终于实现了上百万美元的营收，有了一二十名员工，一切都开始步入正轨。此时，压力才真正出现。公司里的员工会开始幻想：“如果我们公司价值10亿美元，那我就算是百万富翁了！”——我管这种想法叫“影子股票算术”；公司的诸位风投对你的认知将从“言之尚早”转变为“具有高回报的潜力”；配偶也会开始打探你的努力工作何时会真正获得回报。

    然而，事关规模化的艰难挑战和决策正在前方等待着你。只有它们才能催生出真正的价值，而非区区的一时进展。我发现，创业公司一旦开始看到自己的初期投入终于结出了果实，便会面临以下几个最艰巨的挑战：

    1.产品策略：保持专注vs.拓展范围。初期产品表现良好；此时的问题在于，应该将产品策略拓展至何等程度？如果你认为既有产品的现有市场总量（TAM）足以满足你与投资者的胃口，那就保持专注。然而，通常来说，取得更大胜绩的诱惑会诱使创业者踌躇满志，通过有机成长甚或并购来拓展产品范围。我的合伙人奇普•哈泽尔德喜欢将这种拓展模式称为“荷叶策略”：全力跳到相邻的而不是池塘另一端的某片荷叶上。着眼于这种天然的毗连性，企业可以提高自己的现有市场总量——理想的情况是利用既有的客户（扩大客户的服务范筹）、渠道（增加渠道的供应量）或产品（开发天然相关的附加产品拓展现有产品范围）。令我常常感到诧异的是，企业在评估这些连带机遇的时候，并没有仔细考量竞争策略的基本要素。

    可能会有人因为我摆出一副竞争策略大师的架势而赏我几枚白眼，但我真诚地建议各位创业公司的CEO：在评估连带机遇的时候，好好地考量一下那片“新荷叶”的竞争强度、进入风险、替代品的威胁以及供应商和客户的实力。

    2. 财务策略：功成身退vs.扩大融资。火势正旺时，总是教人忍不住想要再添一把柴。如果顾客购置成本（CAC）为1美元，顾客终身价值（LTV）为2美元，何不筹集个几百万美元，获得更多的客户？很显然，这个决策并不轻松。融资是个极其另人分心、操心的过程——再加上股权的稀释，以及投资者的选择，均会对你未来的选择空间产生深远的影响。另一方面，功成身退可能也很教人动心，尤其是对一名从未成功过的创业者而言。但这同样会有许多难题需要考量，我的博文《远离流动性》（Walking Away From Liquidity）和罗杰•艾伦伯格的博文《卖还是不卖》（To Sell or Not To Sell）中，对此均有阐述。

    At the onset of 2012, many start-up executives are sticking their copy of Lean Start-Up on the shelf, leaning back and bemoaning the fact that they have a new set of challenges ahead of them. Although there is a plethora of advice now being given about how to find product-market fit for your fledging start-up, there's a dirty little secret out there: Once you've achieved product-market fit, the hard work really begins. Scaling is hard.

    After three or four years of jamming on your start-up, you've finally crossed a few million in revenue, gotten north of 10-20 employees, and it's all starting to click. Now the pressure really begins. Your employees start doing what I call "phantom equity math" (if this company were worth a billion dollars, I'd become a multimillionare!), your VCs shift you in their mental models from "too early to tell" to "high return potential" and your spouse starts asking about when all that hard work is going to really pay off.

    Yet, the hard scaling challenges and decisions that will enable true value creation, not just interim progress, are all ahead of you. Here are a few of the top ones that I see start-ups wrestle with once they start seeing their initial revenue projections finally come to fruition:

    1. Product Strategy: Stay Focused vs. Broaden the Footprint. The initial product is working well and now the question is how broad a product strategy should you pursue? If you think the total available market (TAM) for the existing product is large enough to satisfy yours and your investor's ambitions, stay focused. But, typically, the allure of pursuing the bigger win draws founders into ambitious efforts to broaden their product footprint through organic development efforts or even M&A. My partner Chip Hazard likes to refer to the broadening efforts as the "lilly pad strategy": Focus on jumping on to a lillypad next to you rather than across the entire pond. By pursuing natural adjacencies, a company can increase its TAM - ideally by leveraging existing customers (meet their needs more broadly), channels (given them more things to sell) or products (extend the current prodcut footprint with natural adjacent add-ons). I'm often surprised that companies don't think through the basics of competitive strategy when evaluating these adjacent opportunities.

    At the risk of getting some eye rolls for evoking Michael Porter, I encourage start-up CEOs to think carefully about the new lilly pad's competitive intensity, entrance threats, threats of substitute products as well as the power of suppliers and customers when evaluating the adjacent opportunities.

    2. Financial Strategy: Exit vs. Raise Additional Capital. Once things are working well, there is a magnetic power that demands pouring more fuel onto the fire. If the customer acquisition costs (CAC) are proving out to be $1 and the customer's lifetime value (LTV) are $2, why not raise millions of dollars to acquire more customers? Obviously, it's not that easy a decision. Raising capital can be a hugely distracting, draining process -- and the dilution implications, as well as the choice of investors, have deep repercussions on your future options. On the other hand, pursuing an early exit can be appealing, particularly if the entrepreneur has never had a win before, but there are many difficult considerations here as well, which I touch on in a blog post (Walking Away From Liquidity) as does Roger Ehrenberg (To Sell or Not To Sell).