- Build a scalable financial foundation early on with integrated banking that can support you at every stage of growth and help you avoid costly mistakes.
- Implement a financial roadmap of critical capabilities to efficiently manage cash flow, and reduce manual workload, costs and risk.
- Partner with expert financial advisors that really know the innovation economy, to help you identify cost-saving opportunities and prepare for growth.
Why you should plan for scalability early on
Accelerating down an open road is exciting – until you hit potholes you didn’t see coming. That’s how it can be for startups when you’re growing rapidly and with limited resources. Success often relies on being prepared to tackle unique challenges and funding uncertainty. Building a scalable financial foundation early on can support you at every stage of growth and help you avoid costly mistakes.
What does that look like? Founders and finance teams will want to equip the business with efficient financial processes, powered by integrated cash management tools that are purpose-built for fast-growing companies. With the right capabilities to control spend and reduce manual work, your teams can stay focused on your innovation journey.
Importance of a financial roadmap
In early stages and growing past Series A, financial planning is about balancing growth and control. You may want to scale fast, but you need to do it efficiently and sustainably. Particularly when VC funding has stalled for certain sectors, increasing cash controls and reducing costly manual processes should be top priorities.
One of the smartest strategies is to have a financial roadmap. It targets the critical capabilities you need to effectively manage cash flow and work more productively.
Leverage integrated banking built for startups
The cornerstone of your roadmap should be banking with an integrated cash management platform. With a solution built for innovation economy companies, you gain agile capabilities that can scale with your business. For example, you can track and manage cash flow across checking and corporate card accounts in real time. And those controls can seamlessly integrate with your spend management system, ERP or accounting software.
Streamlining financial processes and automating reconciliation and accounting sync helps you reduce time, costs, errors and risk. With an efficient, integrated banking platform, you can also centralize liquidity and payments data to capture richer insights for making smarter decisions. Ultimately, it helps you do more with fewer resources, and that’s a big win for fast-growth startups.
Thriving with a micro-staff
As your business starts scaling up, you may be juggling more work and more spending demands with the same small team. It can be a lifesaver to already have capabilities in place that simplify finance operations.
Case in point is some SVB clients we see efficiently navigating growth with just a few people. Before they implemented an integrated cash management solution, they were operating with greater risk. One client told us how they used to struggle with reconciling expenses after business trips. Another had issues with staff frequently purchasing supplies on their personal cards, then seeking reimbursement. In both scenarios, it was a challenge to keep track of daily cash flow, which added more stress when they needed to be focusing on strategic work.
To better manage growth, we helped our clients develop a financial roadmap. It started with integrating their banking workflows and enabling more robust controls for payments, spend management and reporting.
Tap into advisor expertise
Another strategic approach to plan for scalability is to choose a financial partner that really understands the startup world and can help fuel your growth. At SVB, we provide an ecosystem of financial solutions, but we’re much more than a bank. We’re known for our close collaboration with clients to help solve challenges, identify cost-saving opportunities, and see around the curve.
We can act as an extension of your startup team to provide helpful guidance and best practices. You can also take advantage of our sponsored networking events to build relationships with peers, investors and other advisors. It’s all part of our commitment to the innovation economy.
Scaling up with integrated banking for startups
Fast-moving startups with many demands and priorities often find it challenging to put the right financial planning in place early on. But you don’t need to go it alone. Scalable growth relies on scalable finance, and that starts with an effective, integrated cash management solution and strong banking relationships.
You’ll find all of that and more with SVB. Take advantage of our treasury solutions and resources designed to support every stage of growth. Want to talk with an advisor? Email us at TreasuryManagement@svb.com.