A small story about learning & scaling…

IT-Consultingwww.jan-wilhelm.de

Jan Wilhelm

Start-up Challenge 2016

A small story about

learning &

scaling…

The StoryOnce upon a time, there was a father that had two sons. When his sons were grown up, he split his heritage equally across them.

Both decided to form a farming business…

Buys two estates and invests in machines for growing potatoes and sun flowers

Starts building a shop in his barn to sell the goods that he is growing right away from his farm

After the first year the brothers met…

Has started working as an employee for an experienced farmer

He buys potato's and re-sells them on the weekly farmer’s market during the weekends - however with a very small margin

Jack John

In the second Year… Is leasing a small estate, rents a

tractor and starts his own farm Grows first potatoes and sells them

on the farmer’s marked He hires his first 2 employees that

work very closely with him in his day to day business

Jack

Hires 3 employees to run his shop, 6 more to operate his potato and sun flower fields

Starts marketing for his shop on local print media

John

Starts to grow carrots, as some of his customers requested them

For this he splits his sun flower field, never the less, he only was able to sell half of his output

Starts to train his employees with external farming and sales consultants to optimize his business

And after the third year…

Is leasing multiple estates and rents multiple tractors

He grows a large amount of potatoes and sells them on markets surrounding his hometown

Has grown an experienced team that helps him to runs his business

Jack John

What’s the difference between Jack & John’s strategy?

Be aware if your business is running in a learning or in a

scaling phase

By doing things that don’t scale, you can already learn what it takes to produce your product (or how it should work) and what it takes to delight your customers

On small scale you can easier build the role model of your business You can identify the bits and peaces that need to scale Having the capacity to training a small team, will help you big times

later

If you have a proven role model, scaling can be better planned If you have a proven business model, growing your sales to new

markets isn’t that difficult If you have an experienced and well-rehearsed core team, scaling will

be under much better control

What’s experience do you have from learning & scaling?

THX!