Startup Notes 1 - Relationships

In a startup you are continuously innovating renovating trying to find your niche. One of the ideas here is to find a niche, exploit and grow so that you become big or you become good enough at the least to have a profitable exit. In technology lot of such companies end up in the loop of expectation only. They may get hold of one or two accounts and feel they have the technology or IP deployed which might attract potential buyers. But such actions need to happen fast. Else being tied to a client who themselves don't have a clear tech roadmap may itself lead the company to fall back in the curve. And then it's back to again those tiring iterative experiments to bring in Gen AI, Agentic AI and toil to attach latest buzzword to the tech.

Potential buyers are off course looking at multiple factors or to rephrase there are more than one variable which might attract a potential buyer. e.g. A buyer may be more interested to buy the relationship more than IP to gain entry with client, the startup is associated with. In this the relationship has to be really compelling, right from Top leadership to the people on ground, which can also assure future cash flows purely based on relationship and not get stick on one victory (Amdocs acquiring smaller companies due to T-Mobile relationship_. Also, there might be an investor of a competitor who might take note and try for Aqisitions to create a combined entity (Actix/Amdocs).

Companies where leadership gets embedded in technology or IP creation is bound to lose on this front