One of the reasons I left my previous job was out of frustration with the slow pace of decision-making and action. At my previous company, a Fortune 500 semiconductor manufacturer, everything took a long time to both decide and impliment. I knew that at a startup, the pace would be faster and things would get done faster. What I didn’t quite appreciate to its fullest is what it would be like dealing with large companies from the outside.
My startup’s ability to make fast decisions and put them into action promptly has been refreshing and satisfying. But what I have also come to learn are the downsides of being a startup—getting other (larger) companies to pay attention to you and to act at anywhere near the pace of a startup!
At my previous company I had no trouble getting meetings with potential customers, technology partners, or suppliers. Between the company’s global sales network and its strong brand, when I wanted to reach the right person I almost always could.
That is not the case with my startup (and virtually all startups I would say). I’ve found that making contact with the right people at the right companies is a major challenge in and of itself. To start, just identifying the right individual at a company I am targeting can be difficult. I lack the pre-existing relationships that a Fortune 500 company’s sales force has. I also lack the credibility and brand name of a large company. As a result, I have a much higher barrier in getting people’s attention and stimulating their interest as a startup.
By the way, these comments do not just apply to potential customers. They also equally apply to potential suppliers and partners. Even when we are looking to purchase something, we often encounter difficulties getting attention. The near-term business we bring a supplier is minimal and the promise of future high volume is often viewed skeptically. If we are seeking something non-standard, as is sometimes the case, the resistance can be quite high.
Even after succeeding in gaining interest and attention there still remains the dynamic of slow decision-making and action from large companies. They simply have more complex organizations and a broader set of priorities than startups. They also lack the urgency that a startup’s ongoing cash-burn creates in terms of attaining accomplishments within fixed time windows.
This problem is prevalent at the moment for Uniqarta. We have received strong interest over the past few months from multiple large potential customers. But the pace of follow-through has been slow. Open questions remain at each of these companies as to exactly if/how/where/when they should engage with us let alone putting such decision into action. This, in turn, creates uncertainty for us as we are not getting customer feedback fast enough to support our strategic decision-making and market validation efforts.
So, what can we do about this? In many respects, these issues are interrelated and are centered around my startup’s credibility. If I can solve a big company’s problem and communicate this credibly I’ll get attention. With a big company “in the fold” I become more credible to suppliers. Yes, steps such as developing and harvesting my network or executing an effective PR campaign can help get me connected with the right people. But at the end of the day, it truly is a question as to how compelling my company’s solution is and how credible I can be in communicating it.
We therefore need to continue charging ahead with our technology development—even if we don’t yet know precisely where we’re going to focus with it initially. The more fully developed the technology is, and the closer I am to being able to put a solution in a customers hand (even a prototype), the more credible our story is. This is true even if our solution is not a precise match with a given customer’s needs.
That still leaves me with the dilemma of big companies’ slow action—even after I’ve caught their attention. I don’t know that this can ever be fully mitigated but I don’t want to paint all big companies with the same brush. Some are faster than others and this needs to be a factor in my customer selection process. I also believe that the more compelling our solution is the higher a priority a big company will put on it and consequently move more quickly. And finally, it is essential that I reach higher up in target companies’ hierarchy where I can more effectively influence prioritization and resource allocation.
None of this is easy. But finding ways to work with large companies and mitigate their slow pace is essential. Any notion, when I left my previous job, that I was abandoning big-company frustrations were false. It’s just that I am now experiencing them from the outside rather than from the inside!