by Page no: G113
Sessions
Core Activities
2018-09-25: by Dorian Vought
Every startup has a series of activities that are critical to the success of the business, which we refer to as “Core Activities.” As an example, all businesses need to do accounting, but, for an e-commerce business, accounting is a Core Activity, as the accounting must be carefully managed to ensure profitability. A Core Activity for one company may not be important or even required in a different company.
In addition, the Core Activities of a business change over time, particularly as the business grows. For many early startups, human resources may not be a Core Activity when the business has one or two people, but it can become core when the company has a few hundred employees. For the purposes of this exercise, you should examine the Core Activities in the business over the next six months.
Short-term Core Activities in a new startup often relate to refining the model, building the product and acquiring customers. The Advisors and Roles that a new startup needs are often generalists, capable of helping in a wide range of the Core Activities, with specialization in one or two Core Activities.
A list of activities that may be core to your startups is below.
- engineering
- design
- user interface
- copyrighting
- proposal generation
- sales
- customer acquisition
- partnerships
- marketing
- finance
- accounting
- human resources
- licensing
- operations
- supply chain management
- service delivery