SCALING CHALLENGES IN DIGITAL VENTURES

Abstract: The number of startups is on the rise, specifically digital startups with products entirely based on software. These companies are facing a resilient challenge when it comes to increasing their user base, revenue or market share. This process is called scaling, which is an essential part for every startup in order to establish themselves in the market. While there are several generic models focusing on scaling a business, there seems to be a lack of scientific research focusing on the challenges during the process of scaling. This paper describes a qualitative study focusing on purely digital companies which have scaled or are trying to scale. Resulting in finding several distinct challenges and barriers related to scaling digital companies, by comparing and contrasting growth literature with the data generated by this study. Besides these challenges, our findings suggest that B2B and B2C companies are facing different challenges during their scaling processes.