Tips to build a productive startup culture in your development company

The word Startup paints a picture of tech-savvy professionals driving casual dress codes and sipping coffee from biodegradable cups in a space with enviable interior design, ping pong tables and bean bags. Ouch, the stereotype hurts!

There is more to startups than bean bags and beer taps, it is the startup culture that fuels innovation and astonishing growth. It is more of developing an environment that is experimental, agile, futuristic and customer-focused (read not product-centric).

Being at the cusp of the 5th industrial revolution, businesses are in a do or die situation-innovate or die. To stay ahead of the curve, enterprises need to rekindle the fire in their business. Rapid fire innovation, entrepreneurial thinking, nimble execution of  strategies, driving the zeal to innovate and improve.

Luckily, you don’t have to be a tech-obsessed kid who started hacking at 13 (say hello to Bill Gates) to inculcate the startup work culture in your organization.

That’s exactly what we are doing at Toobler Technologies. Being a software development company, we actively encourage and stimulate startup culture in our organizational structure. In case, you are wondering what we did differently to be a success story? Read on….

Key steps adopted by Toobler to drive Change

Changing Paradigms of Development

One factor that separates startups from other big players is their market approach to better serve customers. They keep customers at the heart of whatever they do.

Following the same approach, we made a gradual shift in our development perspective from being  project-oriented to customer-oriented. Our team ensured that clients are involved in the development process right from the beginning and their valuable feedback is used to improve the product/service. To better understand customers and their needs, we regularly interact with them. This has significantly improved our customer satisfaction & retention rates and also helped build trust.

Embracing Agile development, Design Thinking & Lean Product Development

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, organizations don’t have the liberty to spend years developing an app. It is in the blink of an eye that a product or technology becomes obsolete. Adopting the startup strategy, we developed MVPs (minimum viable products). This resulted in faster development, reduced cost and also helped us test core business functionalities early on. In fact, our team could easily test the viability of the product among the target audience without incurring high costs. After gaining insight into what works for the customer and what does not, the product team can easily evolve the product using the iterative development process. 

Building in-house incubators

Following the footsteps of startups, we started strongly believing in the power of ideas. If spots like coffee shops and garages can spark ideas that change the world, then why not our own office space? Offering space for ideas to thrive and grow, we created our in-house incubator. A space for internal teams and individuals to think, invent and grow. This also instilled a sense among the employees that the organization encourages innovation at all levels. 

Finding Your Why 

What is your why? Identifying your driving factors can be a blessing in disguise as it helps you to streamline your efforts on what matters the most. Right from developing the de facto fitness app to solving a business challenge, it could be anything. Once our work had a clear purpose and meaning, the in-house team was ready to take risks, push boundaries no matter what the odds.

The  “why” factor even helped us assess every business decision in light of our final goal. 

Takeaway

This is our story! How we jumped on to the startup work culture bandwagon. With the future being constantly rewritten, adopting best practices followed by startups will create a  work environment that inspires your people to innovate and invent- The Need of The Hour.