Premature Scaling: Why It Kills Startups and How to Avoid It - Ron Benegbi, Uplinq
Ron Benegbi, founder and CEO of Uplinq, speaks to our co-host Sergey about what it’s like to grow a startup without unnecessary hiring sprees, inexplicably large teams, and being unintentional with how resources are allocated.
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Ron runs a tight ship at Uplinq and he shares how and why he does so. This interview also explores why growing a startup for the sake of an exit is a bad strategy, why you should want to hold cash in this economy, how to hire people that make a genuine impact in your growth, and the difference between thoughtful scaling and so-called ‘aggressive’ scaling.
About Ron Benegbi
Ron is the founder and CEO of Uplinq. He is a 4 time tech founder with 2 exits and one flop. Being an immigrant who moved to Canada as a child with his family in the early 70s, he knows what it’s like to start from nothing. As he puts it, he’s not cut from the cloth of overspending. He’s cut from the cloth of disciplined business operations and fiscal responsibility, and that’s how he’s currently running Uplinq.
SHOW NOTES:
00:00 | Who is Ron Benegbi?
00:26 | His father getting a loan to start a business
04:19 | Giving new business a shot at financing (Uplinq)
06:50 | Serving the underbanked (opportunity size)
09:38 | Thoughtful scaling vs. aggressive scaling
14:43 | Building a unicorn is a bad purpose
16:48 | Should you take money from VCs or bootstrap?
18:09 | Why hold on to cash in this market
22:52 | Hiring people that 10X your revenue
29:39 | Not hiding from failure
35:13 | Favourite thing about his co-founder
36:22 | What would you do if your company went bankrupt?
36:52 | Becoming less reactive and more mature
QUOTES:
[11:50] “We're building a company, but we're trying to build a profitable company. So i'm not here to just raise money, and then, you know, hire 20 people and then burn cash and be in the same place six months from now. So we're here to, you know, build a product, do it right; hire in a very thoughtful programmatic way, but also give ourselves enough of a cash runway; while always having business milestones that we need to hit.”
[12:49] “It's not that I'm not in a rush. Believe me, I have a sense of urgency every moment of the day but that has to be balanced against a thoughtful pragmatic way to build a business.”
[19:04] “I'm very very concerned about cash and cash runway. That's the number one reason all small businesses fail, regardless of whether they’re VC funded or not intact or not. And especially now with the markets being what they are with the economy turning, we have to hold on to every penny we have until we can't anymore so that's how I look at it.”
Connect with Ron Benegbi:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbenegbi/
Ron runs a tight ship at Uplinq and he shares how and why he does so. This interview also explores why growing a startup for the sake of an exit is a bad strategy, why you should want to hold cash in this economy, how to hire people that make a genuine impact in your growth, and the difference between thoughtful scaling and so-called ‘aggressive’ scaling.
About Ron Benegbi
Ron is the founder and CEO of Uplinq. He is a 4 time tech founder with 2 exits and one flop. Being an immigrant who moved to Canada as a child with his family in the early 70s, he knows what it’s like to start from nothing. As he puts it, he’s not cut from the cloth of overspending. He’s cut from the cloth of disciplined business operations and fiscal responsibility, and that’s how he’s currently running Uplinq.
SHOW NOTES:
00:00 | Who is Ron Benegbi?
00:26 | His father getting a loan to start a business
04:19 | Giving new business a shot at financing (Uplinq)
06:50 | Serving the underbanked (opportunity size)
09:38 | Thoughtful scaling vs. aggressive scaling
14:43 | Building a unicorn is a bad purpose
16:48 | Should you take money from VCs or bootstrap?
18:09 | Why hold on to cash in this market
22:52 | Hiring people that 10X your revenue
29:39 | Not hiding from failure
35:13 | Favourite thing about his co-founder
36:22 | What would you do if your company went bankrupt?
36:52 | Becoming less reactive and more mature
QUOTES:
[11:50] “We're building a company, but we're trying to build a profitable company. So i'm not here to just raise money, and then, you know, hire 20 people and then burn cash and be in the same place six months from now. So we're here to, you know, build a product, do it right; hire in a very thoughtful programmatic way, but also give ourselves enough of a cash runway; while always having business milestones that we need to hit.”
[12:49] “It's not that I'm not in a rush. Believe me, I have a sense of urgency every moment of the day but that has to be balanced against a thoughtful pragmatic way to build a business.”
[19:04] “I'm very very concerned about cash and cash runway. That's the number one reason all small businesses fail, regardless of whether they’re VC funded or not intact or not. And especially now with the markets being what they are with the economy turning, we have to hold on to every penny we have until we can't anymore so that's how I look at it.”
Connect with Ron Benegbi:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronbenegbi/
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