Concept, commitment, traction, refinement, scaling, and established are the six most common stages that a start-up would have to come through, if it can survive when growing its user base to adopt with its main product. The stages apply to Hong Kong based incorporated technology companies as well as to those companies in the United States and other Asian regions. Immediately after the conceptual and research stage, the entrepreneur should make himself ready to receive investment funds from angel investors. To receive funds, the founders must have first gone through Hong Kong company incorporation. The usual first choice would be to register a limited company.

Next is to be patient, keep your customers always at the center of your producing service/product, and be persistent. At the later stage (such as established), the startup will eventually have to grow into company that has proper structure setup. The only thing left to do is to implement a business tool like employee time tracking software, which you can learn how to do here, in order to be able to oversee your workers. Choices on company structures are listed below.

Choice 1: With a functional structure, employees are grouped into the same departments based on similarity in their skill sets, tasks, and accountabilities. The functional structure enables effective communications between staffs within a department. The enables an efficient decision making process within the same team. IT (i.e. Tech) or Accounting are good examples of functional structure when structured as the same department.

Choice 2: The divisional structure organizes business activities into specific market, product, service, or customer groups. The main objective of such structure (under divisions) is aim to create work teams that can produce similar products. Hopefully, the production would match very well with the needs of individual groups. An example of the divisional structure is geographical structure. Under the geographical structure, a regional division/team can be built to provide products or service to a single specific location.

Choice 3: The matrix structure actually combines the functional structure and divisional structure. The matrix structure enables decentralized decision making and higher autonomy. The structure allows when set up right may encourage higher frequency of inter departmental interactions and engagement. The outcome is usually higher productivity through better use of time and more innovation through imagination. The disadvantages are also obvious. The matrix setup incurs higher costs.

Choice 4: The hybrid structure is similar to the matrix structure. It combines both functional and divisional structure. It is not a grid organization. It splits its activities into departments that can be either functional or divisional. This hybrid structure enables the use of resources and knowledge under each function. At the same time, it can maintain product specialization in different divisions. Nowadays, the hybrid structure is widely adopted by large organizations especially the global companies in the world.

Departments in a company include Human Resource, IT, Accounting and Finance, Marketing, Research and Development (R&D), and Production. Some product-based or project-based companies may divide up business units by addressing a single product or project as a department.