11 July 2025
Why we call start-ups and scale-ups speedboat businesses
Testing an idea, listening to customers and changing course quickly: that is the picture I have in mind when I compare start-ups and scale-ups to speedboats. Not because every young business is naturally agile, but because the metaphor highlights what can make small teams strong. They can operate close to the market, experiment and adjust without having to set a heavy organisational structure in motion each time.
Where a tanker needs time and space to change direction, a speedboat can respond more quickly. That difference is not a value judgement: each is built for a different purpose. For me, the image captures six characteristics we can recognise in smaller, entrepreneurial businesses:
- small and agile
- rapid prototyping and adjustment
- risk-taking and experimentation
- a focus on market and customer needs
- efficiency and making the most of resources
- collaboration
These characteristics are not exclusive to start-ups or scale-ups. Established SMEs can work this way too. Conversely, a small business is not automatically agile. The speedboat is therefore primarily a way of looking at entrepreneurship: what makes rapid learning and purposeful adjustment possible, and what happens to that strength as the business grows?
In a small team, communication is often direct. An insight from a customer conversation can quickly inform a product decision. That closeness makes adjustment possible, but growth also raises a question: can the business remain agile when not everyone can be involved in every conversation or decision?
- Rapid prototyping and adjustment
An initial prototype does not have to be the final product. Its main purpose may be to test an assumption: do customers understand the solution, does it work in practice and does it deliver the expected value? The strength lies not only in building quickly, but also in understanding what the results mean for the next step.
- Risk-taking and experimentation
Entrepreneurship means acting before everything is certain. That does not mean small businesses have no doubts or should take reckless risks. Targeted experiments can help reduce uncertainty. By testing an application, offering or business model on a limited scale, a team can learn before committing further.
- A focus on market and customer needs
Staying close to customers helps uncover which problem really matters. Their feedback provides direction, but not every individual request needs to determine the company's course. The challenge is to recognise the recurring need behind separate requests. Customer focus then becomes a source of insight, without making the business entirely dependent on bespoke work for a handful of customers.
- Efficiency and making the most of resources
Limited time, budgets and capacity force choices. That can encourage creativity, but continually handling more work with the same people is not, in itself, scalability. As a business grows, it becomes important to identify which activities are repeatable and which require the same intensive effort every time.
A speedboat does not need to carry everything on board. Partners, networks and other businesses can contribute knowledge and capabilities that are not available internally. The question is which capabilities the business needs to build itself and where collaboration makes it stronger. Collaboration is therefore not just about support for today, but also about what makes future growth possible.
From Agility to Scalability
The speedboat metaphor eventually led me to a deeper question: what makes a business capable of scaling without losing the agility that made it successful in the first place? A successful product and a team that can respond quickly are valuable, but they do not yet explain how a business can grow without every next step requiring more bespoke work, additional effort or the founder's constant involvement.
That question became part of the journey towards Scalendi Growth Logic. The focus shifted from the speed of the business to the logic behind its growth: what value does it create, which capabilities make that value possible, and which of those can it continue to draw on beyond the current product or the founder's direct involvement? For me, the speedboat remains a useful image. But the question is not just how fast it moves today. It is also what enables it to go further tomorrow.