This is a summary post about what I learned from 100 conversations with owners/CEO’s of mid-size businesses.
Here’s the structure of this post:
Background on why I did this
Defining a midsize company
Who are the people I spoke with
Common challenges during transition (from small to mid size)
Common challenges at midsize
Tips to their younger selves
So let’s get started!
Why did I do this?
Around 2015, it started to become apparent to me that there is abundant resources/expertise available for large global enterprise companies and small local/hobby businesses. They are thus very well served for nearly all of their business needs by available in-house talent and professional services. But what about those companies in between? Those mid-size/mid-market companies you her about? How does one journey from being small business to becoming a global enterprise?
This question niggled at me for a long time, until finally in the spring of 2016 when I couldn’t take it anymore. Folks I’ve mentored will smirk at this next bit. Yes, I followed my own advice that I’ve given to every one of you that you’re tired of hearing: I hustled to arrange 100 deliberate conversations with people who understand this better than me and I learned from them.
Thus, I set out to learn more about the challenges of companies in this growth/transition phase. Maybe I would discover there’s already a solid solution available on the market (spoiler: there wasn’t) or gather enough insight to be able to propose a solution for this market segment.
But before we move on…
What’s a mid-size company?
Here we know there’s this glaring gap in available resources/expertise to serve the segment of mid-size / mid-market companies, but what exactly are they?
