Harvard Business Review Entrepreneur's Handbook

7.

Growth-Stage Financing

During the growth stage, your business expands its sales and develops a growing base of customers. As a result, you’ll need more capital—for expanding your operation, hiring and training new employees, and even acquiring other small businesses. Your company may already be generating some positive cash flows that can help finance these initiatives, but you’ll probably need more cash if your growth is strong or if your strategy is to build brand visibility. Having now proven your business’s credibility, though, you can generally tap external capital more easily than you could in the startup phase. For slow- to moderate-growth ...