Founders, have you started to prepare for board meetings, due diligence, raising or investor meetings and found you have a data problem?
If you’ve set up a business having worked in a corporation, it’s likely that you will have become accustomed to a supply of data, ready to use for reports or optimizing workflows. In a startup, it’s not so simple.
Setting up a business with experience of working in a corporate environment gives founders the opportunity to apply the learnings from large organizations. Whilst there are numerous advantages to growing a scaling business, the lack of people power and finances can make execution of ideas difficult.
A startup never has enough resources. There are always features to develop, products and teams to build, money to raise, and it can feel like there are not enough hours (or people power) to achieve it all. As a result, data management and infrastructure are often low on the priority list. However, implementing a robust data infrastructure in the early days can lead to great rewards.
Who solved the data problem before?
The majority of large corporations operate with a data team. Data teams perform numerous functions from engineering and warehousing to analytics, BI and growth ops. Managing databases and providing information and decision support, data teams provide vital insights to the business. The team often comprises numerous data professionals from Analysts and Engineers, to Scientists and Data Architects, amongst others. These positions command high salaries and significant tooling – requiring time and money to implement.
In a scale-up, money and time are always tight. With so many functions of the business run by founders, establishing a data team can seem impossible and the lack of resources available makes it so.
Why is data important in a scale-up?
You need to leverage data to scale. This is true of all businesses, but getting data right from the outset is vital for business growth. Data tells the truth of your business. By building your single source of data truth, you’ll be able to spot trends, make predictions and build models. Making data a priority creates a data driven environment in which everyone can make business decisions with confidence.
Data should be driving your decisions on Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), which markets to focus on, where to spend growth budget and which software features to build. If some or all of these decisions are currently made on ‘gut-feel’, you’re doing it wrong. What’s more – investors will soon sniff this out!
As a small business, it’s likely you’ll be using multiple tools, each generating volumes of data. Siloed data makes reporting and analysis difficult. Bringing this data together is key for growth. Centralizing disparate data sources and applying your business logic, will generate the full business picture.
Above all, getting data right will help founders answer the single most important – but often difficult, if not impossible – question at any given moment for a startup: how are we doing?
How to solve the data problem in a scale-up
Solving the data problem doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, Kleene makes it easy. We provide scaling businesses with an automated, all in one ELT tool to build your single version of the truth, data lake and warehouse; without the need for expensive data hires. Our team can also implement the infrastructure and deliver results on your behalf!
Our founders, Matt Sawyer and Andrew Thomas spent their careers working in growing businesses, solving data problems. Large companies have dozens of data engineers, database administrators, analysts and data scientists to solve the data problem. Founded to support scaling business in maximizing the return from data, without having to divert excessive resources to the task, Kleene levels the playing field. We provide a robust data infrastructure, without the need for engineering.
Want to see it in action? Get started and see how we can solve your data problem.
