Big, mature companies
Company maturity brings to mind concepts such as professionalism, excellence and competitiveness.
It is the ability to:
- Develop and refine your company’s workflow
- Integrate learning and new knowledge into work procedures
- Making sure leadership is active throughout the organization and bringing employees together around a common goal
- Utilize technology to create a robust business and streamlined workflows.
SMEs – Developing
Small and medium-sized enterprises are mainly private companies with capital, labor and assets below a certain level according to national guidelines. They are characterized by:
- Limited investments: the capital requirement of an SME is lower because it operates on a small scale.
- Labor intensity: SMEs typically do not require heavy or complex machinery – they use more labor-intensive techniques.
- Smaller number of employees: SMEs require fewer people compared to large corporations due to the small scale of operations.
- Local area of operation: SMEs operate locally and stay there for long periods of time (years, maybe even decades), which helps them build strong relationships with local customers.
- Management: in most cases, a single owner or a small group of people manage the business.
Ambitious start-ups
Startups are young companies founded to develop a unique product or service, bring it to market, and make it enticing and irreplaceable to customers.
Startups are rooted in innovation, addressing gaps in existing products or creating entirely new categories of goods and services, thereby disrupting established ways of thinking and doing business in entire industries. This is why many startups are known in their industries as “disruptors.”
Startups typically raise money through several rounds of funding:
- the initial round, known as bootstrapping – founders, their friends and family invest in the company.
- seed funding from so-called “business angels,” wealthy individuals who invest in early-stage companies.
- Series A, B, C and D funding rounds follow, led primarily by venture capital firms that invest tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in companies.