17. The Relationship Strategy
Discovering the power of relational capital
It’s hard to start a company. Period. It’s nearly impossible to start a company with international operations, particularly when it’s in a country you’ve never lived in for longer than a summer. The reality is this — if I was trying to do this without my co-founder’s contacts on the ground, I would have failed before I had begun.
Then again, I probably would have never begun in the first place.
When I finally arrived in Nigeria, I was sought out by a representative from Delta airlines who’s a contact of one of my co-founder’s friends and potentially a future employee at OLA to make sure that I made it through customs and security quickly and safely. When my flight to Abuja was botched, my next flight was booked over the phone with my co-founder along with one of her contacts who was able to quickly inform us of the next flight that I could easily catch. When our hotel reservation which was booked by a contact fell through, another one of my cofounder’s contacts was awake and happy to receive us in her home just after midnight. My movements, my lodgings, and my safety were all taken care of and completely out of my hands. If I was anyone else but my cofounder’s partner in crime, I would have had a hell of a time (in both time, energy, and expenses).
I’m living a Cinderella story of entrepreneurship in Nigeria. The conversations we had which were all incredible promises of support and approval of the work we’re doing were born from years of labor on my co-founder’s part, from her time as a minister in the Nigerian government to her many initatives trying to create something like this in the past. She often looks at me like a God-send and tells those who generously give us an audience that we’ve been able to make more progress in the past three months than she’s been able to do in three years. All I can do at that moment is smile and nod. There’s no way I would have been able to speak to the person we’re sitting with in the first place without her (I often call her my fairy godmother).
The way I was taught, if you want to start a business, you start with a good idea, gain traction by putting it out there and getting clients, present your proof to investors or a crowdfunding platform, and with a little bit o’ luck you’re off to the races. But it’s the relational approach, bringing an idea before friends and contacts for support and feedback, that is more natural for my co-founder. I, of course, continue to operate as the executor of our great idea, gaining traction and visibility as best as I can. But even there I have been greatly benefitted from the relationships I now have by operating under my co-founders wing, in that those who believe in us already are able to bring those without whom it’d be impossible to succeed.
It may partially have to do with Nigerian culture, which is infamously known for the need to know someone to get somewhere. But it has also taught me a very humbling and incredibly valuable lesson: relational capital is more valuable than monetary or even intellectual capital. What is known is trusted; what is trusted succeeds. And now it is up to us — or rather, up to me — to prove that this trust we’ve been given is well founded.
