Few things can be more important to an early-stage company's success—or any company's success, really—than your ability to build trust with the market, with your customers, with your employees, the folks that you're recruiting, and partners in the industry. Exercising that leadership and integrity draws people to place their faith in you.
That includes everything from: Will you be in business tomorrow? If I'm going to write you a check and build parts of my organization around you, how can I trust that you'll have the financial resources and ongoing ability to deliver?
A recent example is this week when the whole DeepSeek controversy hit the internet. The open-source AI model came out from China, and there was a lot of fear and uncertainty in the market about what that meant for people. If it was deployed, would data be going overseas to China? Could it cause some type of security issue?
Then there was the camp we’re in, which embraced this new technology pragmatically to ensure the success and integrity of our business and our customers.
Through all of that, not a single customer reached out to us with concerns about what we might be doing with their data and this new DeepSeek model. I believe the reason for that is trust.
One, contractually, we have a whole lot of safeguards in place to ensure data integrity—making sure data doesn’t leave the United States, strict access levels, HIPAA controls, and SOC 2 compliance. For us to start moving data around would be a breach of trust. It would be a breach of contract.
But beyond that, our customers also know that we have the vision and pragmatism to be good stewards of their interests. That’s what building a reputation for integrity and trust in the industry comes down to—demonstrating that you are a good steward.
I see us as stewards of our customers' data and their money. They invest with us every day, and we are responsible for delivering outcomes and results.
As a startup, you have to demonstrate that level of maturity and leadership day in and day out—whether that’s through contractual agreements that create safeguards for clients if something goes wrong, or, more importantly, by proving every day that you’ve earned their respect.
You need to show that you understand the market and these issues as well as anyone, and that you always have your customers' best interests in mind.
While the world is melting down over what’s the right answer or the wrong answer, sometimes the best thing you can do is reach out to your trusted advisors, get educated, and then relay that back to your customers so you can lead them through the process.
As you do that, you not only build trust and engagement, but you also build long-term relationships. That increases customer lifetime value because they know you're not going anywhere—and they know that you have their best interests in mind.
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