Top 3 problems 50 entrepreneurs face when scaling their startups

“It’s like a man riding a lion. People think, ‘This guy’s brave.’ And he’s thinking, ‘How the hell did I get on a lion, and how do I keep from getting eaten?”

This famous analogy aptly describes the life that entrepreneurs tend to live – doing the miraculous, and holding on for dear life. To the man on the street, being a startup founder might seem sexy and appealing (“Take control of your life, run your own business!”).

However, out of 100 entrepreneurs, 99 will probably tell you otherwise, and the last one is obviously deluded.

So, dear budding entrepreneur, I know that you’re raring to go and do your own thing, and I’m extremely excited for you. It would be wise, though, to first have a glimpse into the major problems startup founders face at each stage of their companies’ lives.

We did a random survey of 50 entrepreneurs, and received a very diverse set of problems faced by them at the seed and growth stage respectively. This makes sense on hindsight, as we made sure to survey across a variety of markets and industries.

There were, however, three key problems at each phase that most startup founders seemed to encounter.

At the seed stage

1) Building a talented and motivated team

For all the attention that startup founders get, the quality of work done – especially in the early stages – is largely determined by the team behind them. Not only do these first employees have to be talented enough to churn out top-notch work, more often than not they also need to juggle more than one task at a time.

Because of this, LawCanvas founder Daniel Leong says that the team needs to be almost as motivated as the founding team themselves – but even smarter.

Jefrey Ong, founder of Malaysia-based roaming service provider Flexiroam, concurs strongly. He believes that employees need to be given a reason to “work in a company that no one had [sic] heard of and forgo the big fat salary that large companies can afford to pay.”

In short, a tough nut to crack.

At the growth stage