Eight business expenses startups waste money on
1. Marketing without metrics
- Measuring your marketing efforts: With access to accurate data and analytics, you’ll be able to see what’s working and what isn’t.
- Iteration and A/B testing: A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a marketing technique that involves testing multiple versions of a campaign against one another to see which one performs better. You should be continuously testing and optimizing your campaigns, making improvements according to the feedback you receive.
2. The wrong accounting solutions
3. Too many software solutions
- Does the team know how to use all our tools?
- Do we need additional training to get the most out of our tools?
- Do we have multiple tools with the same functionalities?
- Multiple video conferencing software tools, project management tools, spend management software tools, etc.
- Do we have tools that aren’t being used at all?
- Are there tools we actually need that we don’t currently have the budget for?
- If so, how could we free up enough budget to get those?
4. Not keeping track of expense reimbursements
5. Booking business travel on consumer websites
6. Extravagant employee perks
7. Overspending on “swag” and branded items
8. Premature scaling
- Purchasing office space, real estate, office supplies, or inventory you can’t afford
- Developing new products or scaling customer acquisition before you’ve found product-market fit
- Over-hiring new full-time employees, or prioritizing quantity/speed over quality and business needs when hiring