Founders dish on how to grow your startup into a fully fledged business

The long hours and mental drain associated with the startup hustle are wasted effort unless the clear intention, from the get-go, is building a sustainable, scalable business.

If you’re looking for a play-by-play on how to get there, you’d be wise to carefully read the Tomorrow Toolkit, a 20,000-word, 20-chapter ebook published by Technical.ly with support from Comcast NBCUniversal. The recently updated version is ripe with lessons from founders who share the best ways to get a startup from growth stage to fully fledged enterprise.

In the book, startup founders from Technical.ly’s five markets (and beyond) share their in-depth take on the subject of growth. Look no further than the section titled “Startups grow into businesses.”

Here are three takeaways worthy of your nighttime reading:

• Create a minimum viable product: What is the one thing that you can consistently offer clients in order to provide value? Take that, develop it and see how much market there is to be tapped. VideoBlocks founder Joel Holland went down this path and eventually led the company to form a profitable partnership with the Discovery Channel for content distribution.
• As you go from founder to CEO, learn to let go: As the company proves its concept, when is the right time to pass on the day-to-day leadership and focus on the long strategy? Read about that here.
• You may fail, and that’s OK: Bob Moul could have been less open about the fact that his company, Artisan Mobile, did not have the exit he hoped for when it was acquired by TUNE in 2015. He chose to open up about it in a move that reminded us of how sometimes, it’s OK to fail, as long as there are lessons reaped from the ashes.