Estratégia e inovação: desafios para gerar impactos positivos nos resultados de vendas de startups

Abstract

For some decades, entrepreneurship has become an important mean of economic leverage, especially in developing countries such as Brazil. More recently, with technological advances and the expansion of the internet, an innovative and entrepreneurial company model, commonly called startup, has emerged, with the objective of developing, innovating or improving a Business Model, preferably scalable, disruptive and repeatable, usually based on technology. In order to support startup entrepreneurship, government and business initiatives are becoming essential ways to direct efforts and investments, and promote capacity building. However, the bankruptcy rate of startups is still considerably high due to failures in attracting investors, inadequacy of the product/service and price/cost, competition, unprepared teams, lack of motivation; in addition to presenting problems in Development Product/Customer and Business Model/Processes, and lack of planning. Academic studies in this area have shown the need to get closer to entrepreneurs, potential entrepreneurs and startups. The main purpose of this research hence is to identify the elements that could lead to get positive impacts on sales results in startups in Brazil. The specific objectives are related to: identify the reasons that make it difficult for startups to remain in the market and verify the degree of knowledge about the Process Model, sales execution strategy, the need for a relationship between the sales/commercial team and the technology/product team, and finally to capture potential investors. The research methodology included: A theoretical survey; Knowledge of the object of study and particularly Interviews with participants of the 2nd. Cycle of the InovAtiva Brazil 2021 program through the application of a questionnaire via the Survio platform as well as, access to information in the InovAtiva Brasil Hub database and mentoring at the event; and the analysis of the results with comparison with the literature and appropriate correlations. The results show that more mature startup companies also overcome more challenges and become more resilient in the sales area; the impacting elements in the sales area of startups influence all areas of the company, because when something doesn't go well, the whole loses its functionality; and proposed paths such as the one that composes Howard Love's (2016) JCurve metaphor, show entrepreneurs that they could and should move forward more quickly, safely and effectively