In recent years the importance of a functioning supply chain has increased significantly for companies. By setting up a supply chain at an early stage, the complexity of a growing supply chain can be controlled early, competitive advantages can be created and efficient processes and structures can be designed. Therefore also start-ups have to face this issue. However, young companies often have a lack of expertise in the field of supply chain management, as they concentrate mainly on their daily business. Due to this, it is difficult for start-ups to identify the key tasks and its priority for setting up a supply chain and to solve the tasks sufficiently well by using resources in an optimal way. The literature hardly offers any specific concepts for this problem that consider the special conditions in start-ups. The main aim of this thesis is to develop a guideline for young and growing companies in the manufacturing industry by providing them support in creating and designing their supply chain from the very beginning. The guideline should contain the most relevant key tasks with corresponding literature sources, recommendations for action and measures that are needed to cope with the tasks arising in this context. In order to achieve the research objective, first of all, a broad literature research in the fields of corporate development and supply chain management was conducted, which focused on special researches for start-ups. Thereof a phase model with indicators for the classification of a start-up company in one of the development phases was developed. Furthermore, the requirements and characteristics of the development phases were combined with the tasks of supply chain management. The result was brought together in form of key task descriptions with recommended actions in a guideline, which is structured in the already defined development phases. Using the example of a real start-up company, the content of the guidelines was applied and reviewed in an exemplary manner.