When it comes to growing a business, the underlying philosophies are all over the place. Some gurus recommend building up a company from scratch and taking your time, and enjoying the process. The idea is that you build a firm foundation, a solid brand and then go from there. If the business is a good one, people will naturally flock to it.
Then there’s another school of thought that sees approaches like that as madness. You need to grow quickly, they say, otherwise you’ll miss opportunities. The goal of the entrepreneur should be to secure as much funding as possible to take the business to the next stage and reach a “critical mass.”
The first approach described here is what people in the business community call “organic growth.” You’re not trying to force the issue. Instead, you’re coming at it from a different set of assumptions and values. Your view is that if you have value to offer, the business will grow without you even having to try. Customers will spread the word that you offer an incredible service – and they’ll thank you for it.
Inorganic growth is all about taking risks and seeing how far you can push things. It denies that great businesses will just flourish of their own accord. It sees the world as a hypercompetitive place and that the only solution is to radically scale the company to keep the competition at bay.
So which is right? And which should you care about most?
It turns out that there are merits to both these views. And it is really down to the entrepreneur to think about which environment suits them best.
The Pros Of Organic Growth
In a strictly financial sense, organic growth means only using funds generated by the company itself. The form that this takes depends highly on the profitability of the business. Some companies manage to move forwards quickly, just using the profits that they make from revenues. Others take much longer.
The benefit of this approach is that you don’t have any counterparty risk. You’re not worrying about paying back creditors or whether you’ll get funding for your next mission-critical expansion. Instead, you’re charting a path that relies on the success of your enterprise right now.
That approach to business can be an emotional boon. You get two distinct senses when you approach it in this way. The first is a sense of confidence that what you’re doing is actually working. Sometimes, entrepreneurs can get a feeling in their gut that the world isn’t valuing what they have to offer. But when your company is making profits right now, you have all the proof you need. It tells you that you should be bringing your model to more people.
The second sense is one of freedom. When you’re in debt to somebody, you feel obligated to them. And this then creates a sort of tension throughout your entire body. No matter what you do, you always have this annoying thought in the back of your mind that you’re “in the hole” and have to get out of it.
Bootstrapping your way to success, however, avoids this entirely and gives you a sense of peace – just what you need when you’re striving to make your enterprise a reality.
The Cons Of Organic Growth
While organic growth certainly has its upsides, it also comes with a bunch of downsides too.
Perhaps the most obvious is the challenge of adapting the business to new demands. Let’s say that you operate a ready-meal company and you sell dishes to people through the post.
It’s a great business model that’s taking off right now. But one of the complaints is that there isn’t enough variation in the meals. People are eating the same old food over and over again. And it’s not what their palates want.
At this juncture, the company has a choice. It can either slowly save up money to develop products, or it can approach investors and seek funds for quicker rollout.
In many cases, the sensible option is to invest and deal with the problem now. Not doing so could lead to loyal customers leaving for another brand.
The same process occurs when deciding how to fund the development of a new product. Your customers might be asking you to update your lineup. But if you go down the organic route, you can’t just whip up something new overnight. It takes time – sometimes many years.
Again, here’s where inorganic growth could come in handy. You could just acquire another company that is already making the product you want and start delivering it to people immediately. That way, you could transform the outlook of your business and compete with your rivals more effectively.
The Pros Of Inorganic Growth
Inorganic growth is what most business advisors prefer. Mainly, this concern comes from a place of fear. They worry that if a company doesn’t scale fast enough, another brand will take its place, and all the spoils will go to a competitor.
Inorganic growth essentially allows you to get to scale faster and outcompete everyone else in your segment. With funding, you’re able to make your brand more convenient and your products better. Eventually, it doesn’t make sense for customers to go to anyone other than you.
Think about what happened to General Motors when Uber came along. For a while, it seems like Uber was going to gain the upper hand over the legacy car company. Eventually, the unicorn startup would be able to provide a ride-sharing service that negated the need for personal transportation.
But that’s not what happened. GM hit back by purchasing Uber’s rival Lyft and immediately put itself back in the game. Now that it’s vertically integrated, it’s ready to face whatever changes come down through the car market. If full autonomy arrives, GM could simply create cars itself and then rent them out to people via Lyft, negating the need to make continued private sales (something that other car companies are going to have to do).
Inorganic growth also makes it easier to open a satellite office to reach new markets. Let’s say that you are currently operating in the US but you know your business has a massive target market in France. In situations like that, it makes sense to open a second office in Europe. That way, you can access markets and generate revenue faster.
Going down the organic route would be difficult because you’d have to save the funds you need first. But with investor capital, you could do it immediately and begin generating returns.
The Cons Of Inorganic Growth
Inorganic growth, however, isn’t without risks. There are problems that you’ll need to consider.
Let’s say, for instance, that you try to grow your company via mergers and acquisitions. You carefully select companies you think will add to your enterprise positively. But, it turns out, that your picks were wrong. The enterprises you bought don’t actually bring you the value that you hoped for.
In many cases, companies make the same errors as investors. They pick what they think are winning business models, only to discover that they don’t really work.
There are numerous examples of this from the business world. Failed acquisitions happen all the time, and they put a drag on firms’ overall finances.
Another con of inorganic growth is the sheer cost of it. Startups wind up paying enormous sums of money in interest which can hurt their growth later on. Thus, any company seeking out funds needs to be confident that business will go exponential. They need to have a sense that they’re going to make 10X for every dollar they receive in venture capital. If they don’t, then the debt has a nasty habit of mounting up and up to the point where it actually makes future growth impossible.
Think about it. What if a startup developed a pair of augmented reality lenses, hoping that they would change the world as the smartphone did. They decided to invest billions of dollars in the project, and then put it out to the market to see whether there were any takers. The product could work. But thanks to the ubiquity of smartphones, there’s a good chance that it won’t.
And that’s the problem with inorganic growth. You’re not getting feedback throughout the process. Instead, you’re taking a punt and hoping that it will pay off enormously.
Which approach you use to grow your business depends tremendously on your objectives and circumstances. Where possible, organic growth might be preferable. Sometimes, there aren’t a lot of people in your space, so you have opportunities to corner the market. In these situations, what matters is your brand, not your ability to dominate the market or get to “scale.”
In other cases, however, you will need to borrow from others, especially if you have significant capital requirements to get to scale. Often, you can’t afford to grow organically. It’s just not possible in your industry.
For some, the combination of organic with non-organic works best.
