Re: Today’s Office hours - thoughts I was going to share

[Ward Hills @Albion]

Elizabeth,

    Thank you. These are really great perspectives.

    I am copying the Office Hours Group so everyone can see. Perhaps we
can discuss later today.

    Best,

    Ward

On 05/08/2022 10:39, Elizabeth Boerner wrote:
> Hi Ward -
>
> I had hoped to join today’s Office Hours.
>
> Here are some of the thoughts I was going to share about startups working with big companies having been on both sides of the fence. My experience is all financial services related.
>
> Happy to chat one on one with any one if I can be of help.
>
> Elizabeth
>
> - Corporations move slow, real slow. Be aware of that from the onset. They are bound by layers of bureaucracy and regulations. Expect long lead times for business development, then for due diligence, then for contract negotiations and execution, then for rolling out, and then every time for making updates/taking new releases.
>
> - Causes for the above range from company re-orgs every 6 months which lead to changing decision makers and priorities which means the person(s) you were working with are suddenly gone or replaced by someone who has different views / agenda / priorities / budget. Changing laws and regulations can also throw spanners. Company might have to suddenly drop everything (like your release / MVP / update / etc) and focus all resources on meeting those. Same goes for any crisis the corp might suddenly encounter.
>
> - Working with a big corp will eat up your resources - For example, banks often bring a core team of +/- 40 to a project. The startup often ends up introducing corp employees to one another. Teams come from finance, ops, product, customer proposition, legal, compliance, risk, marketing, corporate communication and more. They can and will eat up a lot of your time so get in front of that by being super organised and having documentation and demos ready to share and distribute before project kicks off. Simple things like FAQs and fact sheets from the various corp’s teams’ perspective (finance, tech, risk, customer service, marketing, ops, etc) as well as as end user’s go a long way. As does a simple working demo (even if it’s just a video) the corp core team can access anytime. These help ensure everyone is on the same page and really understand what the product/service you’re providing is and isn’t. You want the corp core team to educate one another and the rest of the corp. You want to enable them to answer the easier basic questions or concerns as they pop up so they can answer them on the spot themselves versus always come to you which is slower and eats up your time as well.
>
> - Have a corp side champion or 2 or 3!! and know the stakeholders and make sure they know you. Know their priorities and make they tell you as they change and the why …so you can tailor your interactions to support those - i.e. stay relevant to the corp. Know what the champions and stakeholders are judged on/rewarded for - what determines their bonuses/performance ratings. Make sure they tell you when re-orgs happen and they introduce you to the new people. Create relationships that make the old person favourably endorse you to the new person, etc
>
> - Relationship management is super critical and a necessary investment with a corp you’re counting on as a partner to hit your goals/growth/scale. Corps like senior people involved. But does not mean only a senior person has to do everything. Use your senior person as the face and core message giver for the most important and/or contentious comms, use the team to build the documentation, demos, educational pieces mentioned above, and choose one trusted team member to be the primary day to day point of contact for the corp and make sure they have the bandwidth to own and act on that. That person needs to someone who knows how and when to escalate and should always be included in senior discussions as well.
>
>
>
> Elizabeth Boerner
> 07804774425