Let Data Tell Your Story

Josh explains that throughout your business’s growth cycles, data acts as a powerful storyteller. Your mission is to collect, organise, and leverage it to craft a narrative that resonates with investors. In the early days, building your story around meaningful data helps demonstrate the potential of your product or service. As your business grows, data continues to guide your marketing, sales, operational decisions, and strategic planning.

“However, the way you use data evolves with each phase of growth,” he adds. “Whether you’re starting out, proving viability, scaling up, or leading an enterprise, the focus of your data strategy will change.”

Josh is an expert at helping businesses scale and grow at various stages of their evolution. He’s also a Robot Mascot partner, so we asked him for his top tips on how businesses can use data at various stages, to help them build a compelling narrative to secure investment and grow to the next level.

In this guide, Josh explores the five phases of business growth and provides actionable advice on how to use data to create a powerful narrative tailored to each stage.

Phase One: New Business / Startup

The beginning is about establishing a foothold. Here, you’re looking to create the seeds of a brand, attract the influence of others, develop your own influence, and build proof that your idea and its products/services work while bolstering the network your business can plug into.

Collect and organise data

Focus on gathering data that tells the story of your brand and the effectiveness of your product or service. This includes early engagement metrics, adoption rates, and testimonials. Remember: “Data is a storyteller.” By adopting this principle, you can use data to provide the ‘killer punchline’ that might be the difference between securing funding sooner—or at all.

Focus on trends and patterns

Look for key trends and patterns in the market or your target audience that support your business’s potential. In these early phases, demonstrating trends, patterns, and stats helps you show substance and gain investor confidence.

Research to build a narrative

A little bit of research goes a long way. Conduct industry research to highlight the size of the problem your product/service addresses. Go beyond just stating market size; uncover specific, relevant insights to construct a compelling narrative.  Utilise AI tools to dig into specific insights that quantify the opportunity and address the problem your product/service solves.

Bridge the gap for investors

Be aware that investors are new to your concept. Use data to bridge the gap between your business vision and the investor’s need for proof. The goal is to create a data-led value proposition. Investors need proof, as they’re assessing your pitch from an outside perspective. Fuse your great pitch with solid stats and facts to frame your business as a compelling commercial opportunity.

Phase Two: Viable Business

The next phase sees you take the potential of a business that you’ve now proved exists and turn it into the workings of a business that can achieve scale. Here’s where sales and marketing look to achieve a rhythm. Consistency across the business’s performance matters greatly, and the execution of strategy with people to manage it all becomes central.

Run mini-campaigns for data collection

Design and launch campaigns to collect information from your prospective audience. This could help generate specific insights to inform investors of the opportunity and validate your business model.

Think creatively about how to gather relevant data. For instance, launch campaigns to collect vital information that could provide telling insights for investors.

Demonstrate consistency

Investors look for consistent performance during this phase. Use data to show steady growth, market traction, and the rhythm you’ve achieved in your operations.

Use data to build investor trust

Collect, refine and present data that makes your business’s viability clear, which can aid in solidifying investor trust and support. Present data that portrays your value proposition in a quantifiable way, reinforcing the opportunity for investors.

Phase Three: Established Business

The game changes in this phase as it becomes less about speed and kicking the door of the hinges and more about setting the systems, building the frameworks, developing the people and setting management structures that enable predictable growth. Established businesses are focused on creating/acquiring assets to remove as much volatility as possible, the kind that often bounces in and around phases one and two. In phase three, your foundation is in, the plumbing and wiring too, now you’re finetuning it all to create things like efficiency and capacity.

Create and acquire assets

Use data to identify and acquire assets that remove volatility and contribute to stable, predictable growth – including refining internal systems and processes – and focus on data that can help you streamline your operations, remove volatility, and drive efficiency within your business.

Phase Four: Scaleup Business

Here’s where the stakes are lifted as a proven business with all the right markers in place gears up for a significant growth leap. Performance becomes the name of the game, speed of growth is a focus, innovation is often a priority, returns are expected from early backers and new investors enter the fray as well looking to propel the growth of a business that’s shown real promise.

Showcase performance data

Highlight key performance markers that demonstrate the business’s readiness for rapid scaling. Use innovation metrics, growth rates, and market expansion data to attract new investors and retain early backers.

Phase Five: Enterprise Business

Finally we have the end of the line where a business is often at the top of their industry and generating high revenue and profits. In most if not all cases, these larger companies are stacked with people, managers, and they have an org chart not too dissimilar to a military’s (lots of teams with hierarchical leadership and complex chain of command). In phase five you’re almost too big to be stopped, often very set in your ways and any real changes or big moves require slow sign off across many stakeholders.

Leverage data for strategic decisions

Use data analytics to guide high-level decision-making, focusing on metrics that provide insights into your organization’s performance and market position.

Simplify complex hierarchies

Identify key data points that reflect the efficiency of your organizational structure. Use this information to streamline processes and improve communication channels within your teams.

Gain stakeholder buy-in

Present data-driven insights to stakeholders when proposing significant strategic changes. Use clear metrics and evidence to support your case, ensuring that all levels of the organization understand the impact and benefits of the proposed changes.

The lynchpin to securing the money you’re chasing lies in the story that data you can draw upon can tell an investor which will really bring your pitch to life in new ways. You can learn more about data and where your business sits right now by taking Leadflow’s Data-Savvy Assessment.