Today marks Sweav’s second birthday🎉 Time for reflection.

2023 was a very fertile year. Personally, we both welcomed a newborn baby into our families. At the same time, our crawling Sweav baby developed into a serious business. Despite sleepless nights, diaper explosions, and some market headwind, we grew revenue 4x and members 1.5x.

In addition, we organized several events and moved to a new office. This helped us strengthen our growing community of 220 members. We also achieved near-perfect client satisfaction and, last but not least, reached product-market fit.

Despite these achievements, it was a year of vallen en opstaan. Here are our three main lessons.

Lesson 1: Find out who you are, and stick with it

As management consultants, we grew up professionally in a time of abundant money. Venture capital fueled hypergrowth. Unicorns were the golden standard. In addition, every new company seemed to be a tech company.

At Sweav, we reached product-market fit through a lot of experimentation. Once we found the ideal way to match demand from clients with supply from members, the question became clear. How quickly could we scale?

The answer turned out to be: not that quickly, at least compared to the conventional start-up scaling ideology. Even though Sweav’s operating model and member interface are fully tech-enabled, Sweav is not a tech business.

Sweav’s growth is based on relationships and an increasingly trusted brand. Our clients are senior decision-makers within SMEs, private equity firms, and corporates. To gain their trust, we need a warm personal connection. We also need to build credibility and deliver the highest quality standard. This takes time. Since we became profitable quite quickly, it also does not require external VC financing.

This is also the model that fits us best personally. We get energy from building an engaged community of members and clients, rather than a transactional tech platform.

Our biggest learning is simple. Do not follow market trends or copy what everyone else does. Instead, find out what really drives your business and choose what fits you best. So, find out who you are, and stick with it. For our business, the right path is more moderate growth. It is fueled by trust, brand building, and making the market in a niche that is still small.

Lesson 2: Stop fishing in the wrong pond

Initially, we were fishing in the wrong client pond. We thought everyone in the corporate and investor world could be our client. However, we were very wrong.

It took us a long time to find our ideal clients. It also took time to learn how we could best reach them. We tried everything, from warm outreach and cold acquisition to online marketing and radio campaigns on BNR. Through trial and error, we learned that our ideal customer belongs to a very specific market segment.

In retrospect, our ideal clients were there from the start. They were our early adopters for a reason. If we had examined their specific characteristics earlier, we could have targeted similar potential clients from the beginning. As a result, we would have grown faster sooner.

The same applies to our members. Sweav is not a community for everyone. We found that members who hit the project ball out of the park again and again share very specific characteristics. For example, besides having a background in strategy or M&A, they are eager and have the fire to fix things, whatever those things are. Therefore, we now test these characteristics much more thoroughly before welcoming someone to Sweav.

Getting this right creates a snowball effect. Positive referrals and a warm network of happy clients and members create word of mouth. In turn, that leads to further growth.

Lesson 3: Embrace the grind and take some risks

Coming from management consulting, we were surrounded by well-behaved and very risk-averse people. Many of them believe that a high IQ and saying smart things are the keys to success. However, in our second year of building Sweav, we learned something else. When you build things, it is much more important to grind and take calculated risks once in a while.

We stopped doing projects as freelance strategy consultants ourselves. As a result, we gave up regular income and financial security. We also made some unconventional investments during a recession. For example, we moved into a big-budget office at a triple-A location, hired employees, and launched an expensive national radio campaign.

In addition, we may have sent direct cold emails to partners at private equity firms. We may also have bluntly asked connections for introductions to potential clients. Sometimes, we get pushback or an indignant reply. However, as long as that does not happen too often, we do not mind.

There are also many moments when running a start-up is simply not that exciting. You do client outreach and repeat the same story for the 100th time. You fix an invoicing system that does not work. You extend employee labor contracts. You name it.

However, as with everything, things add up over time. So, as long as we keep doing things a bit better than the week before and take uncomfortable risks once in a while, we believe we can keep growing.

Looking forward to 2024

We are very optimistic about 2024. Now that we understand what to focus on, we are confident that 2024 will bring further accelerated growth. Two of our more exciting goals are to experiment with expansion in both categories and geographies. For example, we want to explore legal as a category and the UK as a market. In addition, we want to recruit more full-time employees to boost our execution firepower.

To anyone thinking about starting a start-up, we would say: go for it. We know start-up life is not for everyone. However, if you are very excited about a business idea, give it a try. At worst, you will make as many mistakes as we did. Good luck!