Startup Relationship Strategy Enterprise and Empathy
Startup Relationship Strategy: The interconnectedness between
people inside and outside the venture means that the founder is in relationship with many people and will continue to be so. It will require figuring out how she intends relationship will be lived and expressed, not only by herself, but also (inevitably) in all business activities, day-in and day-out—now and for the longer term. She can choose an active intention, or just let relationship happen as it will. Relationships cut both ways in business as anywhere else—either party can decide to quit.
The motivations to startup a new venture vary widely, but without consistent and continuing sales, there is is no business. Sales strategists will give a lot of attention to value propositions, target markets and customer segmentation. They will consider promotion and distribution channels. They’ll work on product positioning and competitive analysis, They’ll think about the sales funnel and revenue growth. A lot of attention will be given to sales staff recruitment and training. There tends to be focus on facts more that feelings.
Customers Are People Just Like You!
Chances are high that in the big corporations you know or whose consumer products you buy, ‘scientific marketing’ will have been employed to capture your purchase. What is scientific marketing? It
The sales strategy will probably involve the design of a CRM (the means of managing a company’s interactions with current and potential customers). It will have more to do with sales transactions than relationships—doing rather than being. Significant differences exist between customer relationships, customer relations, service, or support—though they are often used interchangeably.
Relationships involve how or why people are connected. Customer relationships are not simply about transacting the sale and purchase of products. Business founders know this well, since at the outset it’s probably they who sell directly to customers, and get direct feedback. The supply chain will be short and is less likely to involve a complex chain of command, or many players in different actors in the chain.
Entrepreneurs Are Close to All Stakeholders—Initially
At the start, founders play multiple roles and know all their colleagues directly. As the business grows, organizational structure inevitably results in responsibilities and roles becoming dis-aggregated and communication becoming more diffuse, remote and indirect. Organization charts get built. Communication becomes a management function, not just an activity in which we all indulge—inside and outside the business.
As the startup scales, it is likely that the sales and marketing function will be responsible for communication outside the company. It will provide the leadership on the subject, but in practice will not determine the company’s way of being as a whole. From the very beginning, that’s why the startup’s human character has to be based on a conscious strategy.
Growing businesses have a tendency form ‘silos’ inside the company and people naturally associate themselves with colleagues within each silo. It takes a conscious effort to remain true to high minded values when your sales figures need to meet target, or the accounts need to be out on time.
Customer Relationships Not Confined To The Sale
Almost every function of a business impacts relationship with the customer. This is the
most significant reason why an entrepreneur cannot leave the subject to just one department. It is inevitably a strategic issue.
Relationship happens and develops within a context. The character, atmosphere, morality and policies of the business will help shape how relationships develop inside and outside the business.
Operational conditions can just evolve—or be strategically set by the company and impact the way business is done—and how people feel it. If financial issues, like costs, revenues, margins are dominant priorities, relationships will develop consequentially, rather than intentionally.
Why Relationships with Customers Break Down
Relationships with customers break down because they are unintentionally neglected. Examples include:
- Automated telephone answering: how frequently repeated have you heard “due to the unusually high call volume…” followed by instructions on which number to press for your need?
- Every time you call! You quietly say to yourself, “b……t”;
when a company agent says, “that’s above my pay grade”, or “sorry, but that’s company policy”; - You receive an automated unsigned reply to a query;
a company sends an overdue payment document with no conciliation;
customer calls are not returned; - Satisfaction surveys are outsourced or questions seem irrelevant;
- When companies reduce customer experience to its acronym, CX.
Each of these simple examples demonstrate the company’s focus on transaction, rather than relationship. Chances are high that in such a company, the employees are not respected either. It’s hardly surprising then, that they treat customers the way that they experience their employer.
Research from Zurich Insurance Group and Stanford University reveals that showing empathy in customer interactions is much appreciated—and good for business. Seventy three per cent of consumers avoid businesses that don’t show empathy with almost half (43%) taking their business elsewhere when brands fail to deliver.
Startup Relationship Strategy: Respect & Responsibility
Respect and responsibility are easy to say, but difficult to show. Building a positive relationship strategy from the startup has benefit inside and outside the business. If respect and responsibility are normal within the company, it is highly likely that they will flow between the company and its customers. The ripple effect is invisible, but amazing. No advertising, no boasts, no recruitment claims. Just the behavior of individuals.
One example I know about is a company that was originally established by two young Dutchmen who met at university in 2006. What began as a study project used by family and friends has now grown into a premium platform that allows small business owners to build a website easily. The business grew to about thirty people and launched internationally in 2020, as Webador. There was a point at which I thought to simplify the Venture Founders website into a blog.
I found Webador and started on my project, but not being a techie, I needed a lot of help, so I contacted their customer support. I was a bit phased when I discovered the company was based in Europe and they only offered email support. But wow, from my first contact a few things were striking.
Not only was the response from Ruby the same day, it was charmingly encouraging and I thought she ran the company. In several weeks of contact with Webador the pattern continued until I decided to stick with my existing format. I was not even a customer, but I was treated as if I was—a valuable one at that. That attitude was maintained even when I did not proceed. If you visit the Webador ‘About’ page, I think you will understand why my personal experience is almost certainly the norm.
Startup Relationship Strategy Is Hard To Practice
At the other end of the scale to a startup, just briefly remind yourself about the Boeing company and the issues of the 737 MAX airplane disasters. A good way to start would be to read Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago. It is an article published in Working Knowledge: Business Research for Business Leaders, by Harvard Business School. It might almost be essential reading for business founders, before lifting a pen to write a business plan.
However, declaring a mission of respect and responsibility will mean nothing as the business grows if the founders do not take steps to ensure that a relationship culture is not only embedded, but also revitalized and lived in daily operations. Enterprise and empathy are a winning combination, but do not result from declarations, but rather from live behavhior and experience.
Definitions of business strategy are usually described as plans to achieve an organization’s goals and objectives, rather than how it means to achieve them—or its purpose for being in the first place.
The Three Rs of respect, responsibility and relationship are as basic to a startup as the Three Rs of reading, writing and arithmetic are to elementary education. How often have you heard startup strategy described in terms of capturing value, rather than sharing value—and asked yourself what the word ‘capture’, implies?
Startup Relationship Strategy: Your Own People
A serious consideration of startup relationship strategy is to quantify the implementation of its cost-benefit, never mind your motivation to make an impact. Naturally the most significant aspect is the way that new staff are recruited, trained and managed. Once the startup involves more than the lonely entrepreneur, as she is joined by just one or two people, then relationships can “be structured as hierarchies or as networks. In hierarchies, members are ranked by privilege relative to one another; in networks, members relate as peers—counterparts of similar power and opportunity.”1
If network members are to relate as peers, then that has to be made clear, believed and practiced by all. Sounds easy? All you have to do is declare what you expect. Wait a minute, that sounds like hierarchy talking! It ain’t easy and need a great deal more than a declaration.
It’s little wonder that so many companies, both startups and established ones don’t put intangibles like employee satisfaction on their balance sheets—precisely because people and their skills or experience are not considered assets, unlike cash or fixed assets, such as property or machinery.
From my own entrepreneurial experience, as our startup began to grow, our bankers 
persistently pressed us to invest in a property, because our business sold ‘vaporware’ aka management consulting. They wanted to see solid assets on our balance sheet, so we finally caved and bought on an expensive wing of a big country house. It actually worked for us as our offices. It was a great place to work and staff loved it and the park surrounding it. Somewhat to our surprise, clients also enjoyed visiting and it probably gave some of them the impression that our services must be why we had such a great client list. Sadly, after we had sold the company, it became a noose around the necks of our successors.
Enterprise and Empathy
In his book, The Madness of Markets, Alex Edmans makes the point that emotion can influence the stock market, which shocks many financial pundits, and equally so, human emotion will influence any activity of the firm, big or small, for either good or bad. Alex also wrote in a an Economist piece on Dizzyingly High CEO Pay, “Executive-pay packages are notoriously complex, stuffed with performance measures and all-or-nothing targets. Such contracts can lead bosses to focus on what is measurable rather than what matters. For example, incentives to promote diversity, equity and inclusion often end up rewarding demographic box-ticking rather than genuine cognitive diversity or inclusion.”
First of all, you, the founder, have to understand what what you want, and feel it as part of you. Then of course, there will be both a process to create and policies to follow. Naturally it starts with recruitment, and training for the cultural competence of people to both acknowledge, apply and live the competence. As a regular and ongoing system, it will be necessary to observe and measure empathy on a systematic basis.
In the same way if you institute an aim to be a business that practices Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), how on earth do you quantify behaviors that manifest such a policy? Not easy, I hear your think or say already. It’s no good just measuring activity, it’s the results, or outcomes that matter, not simply doing things that sound nice.
Startup Relationship Strategy: More Advice
While it’s your own people who build and maintain your company’s relationships, and customers that can enhance or diminish them, the wider community allows the venture’s survival. Hence, the elusive trust between all the interdependent communities is an issue that demands continuous attention.
“Empathy is more than just a soft skill—it is the cornerstone of trust, cooperation, and sustainable organizational success”, as the International Council for Small Business says. I say enterprise and empathy lead to a business that thrives. This by observation and my own experience as an entrepreneur.
Venture Founders has more help for entrepreneurs on making their startup relationship strategy create a context for the business to prosper and flourish. Creating startup statements of intent right from the get-go will require hard work that will set the conditions for any strategic thinking. While it may sound mushy, embodying connection, trust and love in relationships will have a strong influence on strategic success. Team behavior building and entrepreneurial empathy can create the venture’s way of being. The conscious competence matrix is a tool to help people move from ignorance to mastery. All that hard work is great, but also purposeful startups track outcomes to learn and move on.
Notes
1. The Madness of Markets: Why Smart Investors Make Crazy Decisions, by Alex Edmans, professor of finance at the London Business School, 2026.
2. New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World, by Kevin Kelly, the co-founder of Wired magazine, published back in 1998.
