The Value-Creating Power of Person-to-Person Relationships

Relationships are the glue that knits together people who will engage in the innovative process of bringing something new into the world. Relational integrity is key to forming those strong relationships that can enable those breakthrough moments of forward progress.

Sometimes it feels like we spend our lives engaging with faceless corporations. It is easy to be anonymous and invisible when going online or into a retail store to engage in some impersonal transaction, asking a search engine to get the answer to a question, or relying on others’ reviews to minimize risk and engagement.

However, in their early stages, high-potential innovative startups are a very different game. Driving innovative change is hard and often requires person-to-person connection and relationship building. The opposite of anonymous and invisible, to progress, you need to find ways to get others to connect and enroll individually, to take a chance on trying and promoting something new. To be motivated to volunteer to help.

One of the most significant leverage points in building an early-stage startup is connecting and building relationships with people who get excited about what you are doing – and are willing to give their time and talents to help you succeed. Here are some examples from my startup experience:

• At a pitch competition at the earliest stage of founding a startup, before any money had been raised, I spent 10 minutes articulating the problem we were trying to solve and the core of the innovative solution we intended to bring to bear to a crowd of potential investors and other interested startup ecosystem folks. It was a clinical solution, and when I walked out the conference room door, I was startled to find that three doctors who were completing their MBAs had followed me into the hallway to learn more details, express their interest, and offer their enthusiastic assistance. Still helping five years later, the same three doctors had provided their clinical and healthcare insights with endless input on product design questions, assisted in responding to the FDA, edited documents we drafted, and introduced us to their colleagues. They wanted to see this product come to life and save lives – and they wanted to be part of building something successful that made a difference. Essentially, they and a few others I picked up along the way became an informal clinical advisory board and made everything we did better and more relevant to our target customers with their insights.
  
  
• As we entered the final stages of product development, we recruited a dozen lab leaders as beta testers. They volunteered themselves, their teams, and their facilities to experiment with a new product and give us the essential feedback required to tune our offering into final ready-to-launch form. They took a chance on something new and unproven to be on the cutting edge. Ultimately, we knew we were ready to launch when the last round of beta testers started asking if they could buy the product rather than send it back.
  
  
• First-mover pilot customers are one of the most valuable volunteers you can recruit as you seek to establish product-market fit as you launch your innovation. Finding these visionaries who can imagine how their world could be made better by something new and unfamiliar – and who are able and willing to sell that vision to others in their organization is of immense value to a startup. For my most recent three pilots, in each case, we identified a visionary champion who could see the potential, recruit others to participate in the pilot, and navigate the organizational complexities to achieve a fair evaluation and ultimately support full adoption. Of course, having a product that potentially solves an unmet need is essential. Still, it takes more than that to build the relationships that will drive the organizational will to experiment and explore together to determine the as-yet-unproven benefits.

I am constantly reminded that people are at the center of everything startup. Of course, there is the core startup team and the optimistic investors; however, beyond that, a startup also needs to build relationships with others to succeed. In my experience building high-potential business-to-business startups, the secret sauce to creating the value that the startup hopes to realize.

Building relationships where each side is willing to lean in and give abundantly is a lot of work. It is not a one-time event but an ongoing interaction that demands authenticity, respect, and some value exchange. As you find those supporters, it is essential to treat them with great relational integrity, and this is key to persuading them to voluntarily contribute to building your startup. Here are some tips I have found work for me in forging those relationships that make a significant difference in helping bring a startup to life and success in the world:

• Be genuine in your motivations, and be sure to communicate how much you value and care about them. I sincerely care about people in general and these individuals in particular. When people know that you care about them, they are more willing to give generously to you.  

• Focus on helping find success together. I want to help them be heroes and superstars. I want to give them “stuff” that they value, which may be commiseration, solutions to their problems, the power to make a difference, and education that is challenging for them to access. Seek to understand what “currency” matters to them, which is sometimes as simple as asking what you can do for them. Remember, it is about the relationship, not the immediate transaction.
  
  
• Be open and transparent. Understand their unmet needs, the organizational constraints they must navigate, and figure out how to make it a win-win for both sides using commitment, creativity, and open communication.

• Engage them with respect, honor, and empathy. Maintain a solid communication cadence, so they know that you will keep them in the loop. Make sure they are not surprised and hear about significant new developments from you first. This conveys that you respect and value them.

• Be trustworthy. Take mutual risks on each other. Trust builds when commitments are met.

• Share yourself and invite them to share themselves. Relationships go deeper when the people involved connect personally.
  

These relationships do matter to me. I am highlighting how they are also valuable to the startups I lead, but my appreciation for the folks who step up and engage is deep and genuine. As the “face of the company” CEO, the line sometimes gets fuzzy between my startup and me. I embody my startup – and I build relationships between myself AND my startup and other people who have some connection or alignment with it. I try to make those relationships profoundly authentic, win-win experiences for both sides. I try to understand what the other side wants/needs and figure out how I can help give them that. Sometimes it is the chance to champion something new and exciting – and my role is to ensure that we equip and deliver well. Sometimes they are curious and want to learn about entrepreneurship and to be involved in the entrepreneurial process – and my offering to them is a willingness to share, collaborate, and teach beyond just the minimum required for us to work together. Sometimes they want to be heroes and superstars within their organization, and we can enable that. Sometimes they just want to enjoy a friendship built around mutual interests and personal compatibility. Ultimately, I value them and believe they value me – and together, we seek to make a positive difference in the world.