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Most accelerators will tell startup founders to focus on networking. You never know who can be extremely helpful in building your startup. Also, you must make sure that you don’t just network for the sake of it. This quote bases itself on the strength of building real relationships to help in your startup journey. Make sure however that you’re not limiting the scope to a short-term output. The worst thing you can do as a startup founder is to go to networking events and start asking people about investment. The purview needs to be larger than that – the love for the field.

With that in mind, we dedicate this post to the quote

“My advice is to focus on the importance of forging a long-term relationship, whether with colleagues, partners, or customers. It is often easy to get caught up in short-term decisions.”

-Sheila Lirio Marcelo, Founder of Care.com

Forging long term relationships in startup

This is a no brainer. If you want your startup to thrive the test of time, it is through the relationships you build. You are not a big enough brand to maintain mere transactional relationships. Relationships in a startup take a different shape, everything you do, you will be doing a fresh start.

With that in mind, don’t worry about the small sacrifices to build these relationships which will serve you in the long run. Having been an integral part of startups, I can recollect a lot of situations where these relationships have saved us. Most of these relationships were to do with customers – with B2B being an integral part of our revenue model, we had to ensure that these customers are happy.

This extended to suppliers, investors, mentors – in fact everyone we came in touch with. This doesn’t necessarily mean we did a great job of maintaining a perfect relationship with everyone. We had our ups and downs, but in the long run, the only thing that survives is these relationships. 

Temptation:

There is sometimes a temptation to go for a low hanging fruit to make sales happen. You might be tempted to pivot the business to reach a few revenue goals. This is not wrong, but just be careful enough to ensure that you are not deviating a lot from the business model. If you are, make sure that it is well thought out.

Existing Relationships:

There have been instances where business have reduced costs for new partnerships while the old ones are maintained at a higher rate. This is nothing but a bubble waiting to burst. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how these double standards could hurt and ruin the existing relationships you have.

Pareto Rule:

Remember, the famous  pareto rule: 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers. I may be oversimplifying the rule a little bit. But you don’t need to be a business which caters to every single person in the world. Identify your target profile and stick to them. You are with your customer for a long journey. Ensure that you are worthy of this trust.

People:

Your business is all about your people. No matter what service you provide, unless the customer is happy and satisfied, you are shooting yourself in the foot. There may be times when you feel that these relationships are asking for a lot. Well, any relationship worth keeping does take a bit of effort. You can focus on a short-term relation and wonder what happened. Or you can focus on the long-term relationships which can take your startup through some rough tides.

After all, a business is not too different from your real life anyway. It is just a slightly different approach but it is always about people.