FNB’s Omelele Mmbo says entrepreneurs need more than access to markets and funding to turn promising small businesses into sustainable growth engines
Seen Here: South Africa has no shortage of entrepreneurs with bold ideas and the courage to start. But the real challenge begins when it’s time to scale. FNB Business Development Head Omelele Mmbo says sustainable growth requires more than access to funding or new markets. Entrepreneurs need the right systems, people, financial discipline, capacity and customer insight to turn opportunity into lasting enterprise. Photo Credit: Supplied
JOHANNESBURG, 4 September 2026 — South Africa has no shortage of entrepreneurs willing to take risks, identify opportunities and build businesses from the ground up. Yet, according to FNB Business Development Head Omelele Mmbo, the country faces a less visible but equally important challenge: helping promising businesses make the difficult transition from start-up to scale-up.
In a thought-leadership article, Mmbo argues that while considerable attention is given to encouraging entrepreneurship and helping individuals launch businesses, significantly less focus is placed on what happens once a business has survived its earliest years.
The result is a scale-up support gap that can prevent viable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from becoming larger, more resilient businesses capable of creating jobs, supplying bigger markets and contributing more meaningfully to the economy.
“Scaling is often treated as a natural next step, but growth is not automatic,” Mmbo says. “It has to be deliberate, structured, and aligned to what the next stage requires.”
From founder-dependent to business-led
One of the biggest obstacles to SME growth, according to Mmbo, is that entrepreneurs can remain trapped in the mindset and operating model that helped them launch their businesses.
In the early stages, founders frequently perform almost every function themselves — from sales and purchasing to operations, administration and problem-solving.
That hands-on approach can be essential when resources are limited. However, it can eventually become a barrier when the business begins to expand.
The critical transition, Mmbo argues, is for entrepreneurs to move from working in the business to working on the business.
That means developing teams, systems and decision-making structures that allow the organisation to function effectively without every decision or task depending on the founder.
Without that shift, growth can increase the workload without necessarily increasing the business’s capacity or resilience.
Growth can expose weaknesses
Mmbo also cautions entrepreneurs against confusing access to a major opportunity with readiness to take advantage of it.
Consider a small manufacturer producing 500 candles a month from a garage that suddenly lands a retail contract requiring 30,000 units.
The contract may appear to represent the breakthrough the entrepreneur has been waiting for. But without the production capacity, working capital, systems, staff and logistics required to fulfil the order, the opportunity can quickly become a threat to the business.
A business owner may take on debt to meet the order, only to discover that payment cycles do not align with production costs and operating expenses.
“If the owner takes on debt to fulfil a large order but cannot deliver efficiently, the expected income may not materialise in time, leaving the business overextended and vulnerable to cash flow pressure,” Mmbo explains.
In extreme cases, an opportunity that was supposed to accelerate growth can instead contribute to business failure.
Scaling is about more than selling more
The challenge, therefore, is not simply finding more customers.
As businesses grow, pressure increases across virtually every part of the operation — including production, premises, stock management, working capital, staffing, distribution, customer service and quality control.
Growth also changes the competitive landscape.
A successful product is likely to attract competitors, while larger businesses may enter the market with greater resources and purchasing power. As competition intensifies, margins can come under pressure.
This makes financial discipline increasingly important.
Entrepreneurs seeking to scale need a clear understanding of their cost base, pricing, margins, capacity and competitive differentiation.
Increasing sales without understanding these fundamentals can create the illusion of progress while weakening the underlying business.
Building capacity before the opportunity arrives
Successful scale-ups, Mmbo argues, are businesses that prepare for growth before growth happens.
That preparation extends beyond buying equipment or moving into larger premises. It includes developing repeatable processes, establishing effective systems, building capable teams and creating structures that allow the business to deliver consistently as volumes increase.
“These are the foundations required to support sustainable growth,” he argues.
Customer understanding is equally important.
Scaling is not necessarily about selling greater quantities of the same product. Businesses need to understand the broader customer journey and identify additional opportunities to create value.
A spaza shop, for example, may grow not simply by selling more bread, but by understanding what customers routinely need alongside it and adapting its offering accordingly.
The principle is straightforward: sustainable growth comes from understanding the customer more deeply, not merely pursuing higher sales volumes.
The role of banks in the scale-up journey
Mmbo says entrepreneurs should not be expected to navigate the scale-up journey alone.
Business partners, including financial institutions, have an important role to play in helping entrepreneurs understand what sustainable growth requires.
For banks, this responsibility extends beyond providing access to finance.
The greater opportunity lies in helping business owners assess their readiness for expansion and providing the insight, tools and networks that can help them grow responsibly.
This approach recognises that funding can accelerate a business, but funding alone cannot compensate for weak systems, insufficient capacity or poor financial management.
The question is therefore not simply whether an entrepreneur can obtain funding, but whether the business is sufficiently prepared to deploy that funding effectively.
Closing the scale-up gap
South Africa’s entrepreneurial economy has demonstrated significant potential, but the next stage of the SME conversation needs to move beyond business creation towards business growth.
Helping more entrepreneurs launch businesses remains important. But equally important is ensuring that those businesses are equipped to survive the pressures that come with expansion.
The difference between a business that remains small and one that becomes a sustainable growth enterprise may ultimately come down to its ability to build capacity, professionalise its operations, understand its numbers and reduce its dependence on a single founder.
For Mmbo, closing the scale-up gap is ultimately about more than individual business success.
It is about building a stronger SME ecosystem capable of producing businesses that can employ more people, supply larger markets, withstand economic shocks and contribute meaningfully to South Africa’s economic future.
The entrepreneurial spirit may get a business started. But structure, readiness and deliberate execution are what allow it to scale.
