Why relationships will give you more leverage than your talent

In September 2012 I got an email that changed the trajectory of my career. It was a rejection email about a funding application that I had submitted.

Earlier that year, I had started an on-demand food delivery startup in Bristol, England, with little funds from close friends. I was a novice entrepreneur. I had underestimated what it takes to run a high-growth tech startup. I spent most of the investment on what I’d thought regular business people spend money on — advertising, an office lease, furniture, an office phone line and of course, a swanky business card.

Within weeks, I was running out of money. Then I came across an angel investor from Birmingham whilst researching another startup that announced their funding. His name is Doug Scott. Doug had just started investing in technology startups in England at the time. So I reached out to him, explaining my business and why we needed funding from him.

I got his reply a few weeks after, and it was negative. What stood out is not that he said no, because I’ve had a few of those, but the sharpness of the No. He assessed my business idea badly.

When I read the email, I knew I had 3 options for how to respond. Accept his assessment, ignore or reply with a push back. I choose to reply. So I sent him an email outlining 10 reasons why I thought his assessment of my business was wrong, why I’d be exploring the market and why I wouldn’t give up just based on his opinion. I knew I was debating with someone who’s significantly wealthier and more experienced than me, but I was willing to engage rather than ignore him.

Doug responded within minutes of my email, asking that we meet in London for coffee. When we met, we had a good debate. But more importantly, we connected as two humans on a journey. Doug was fascinated with my story as a Nigerian academic who founded a food delivery startup in Bristol.

He decided to invest in my fledgeling startup. Not only that, but he also introduced me to other investors that backed my business. That meeting was one of the most significant singular events that catalysed my journey into entrepreneurship in a way I couldn’t have done by myself.

Over the years, I’ve come to see Doug as a friend, someone I debate ideas with and most importantly a mentor who has shown up at critical points in my entrepreneurial journey. He created an investment role for me in his company when it was obvious I had to leave my startup. He provided seed investment when I started my second company. He encouraged me to become a VC in Africa when he saw my passion for the region.

A few years later, in December 2015, I got an email that allowed me to be like Doug for someone else. The email was from a young man called Yele Bademosi. He had read an article I wrote about the Nigerian startup ecosystem and my intention to start a new company in Lagos. He asked for a meeting and an opportunity to be part of that vision.

I responded positively.

We spoke on Christmas Day 2015, and I saw in Yele what I thought Doug saw in me a few years prior. We connected on a personal level. And I got to know his story and his ambition.

After our meeting, Yele decided to join my new company. And my commitment to him was that I’ll teach him all I know, introduce him to my network and help catalyse his entrepreneurial journey.

We both viewed Yele’s role in my company as a tour of duty, en route to his gig. About a year later, he left to start a fund that invests in early-stage startups in Nigeria. I was privileged to play a small role in helping him to make this happen.

In all of this, I came to realise that I had been part of a serendipitous human chain, one in which I had been a beneficiary, and a benefactor. I’d thought about this deeply and realised that this chain is more common and accessible than we often realise.

It can be found within our existing network or sometimes in uncommon places. As I reflect on the trajectory of my career, I’ve gleaned 3 key lessons I’d like to share with you on this.

Number 1; my ability to find, develop and maintain key relationships provides more leverage in my career and business than my qualifications, expertise or experience.

This was an important lesson for me, especially given that I started my career as an academic with a PhD, and worked in a setting where success is mostly calibrated by your intellectual capacity than your ability to build human relationships. I had gone into the business world knowing how important it is to build networks, but grossly underestimated how critical it is for success.

Studies have shown that though academic aptitude is a function of high IQ and talent, it has little bearing on how well a person will succeed as an adult. And that high academic grades account on average for only 2.4% of the variance compared to other factors such as communication, emotional intelligence and relationship building that determines occupational performance.

Every success I’ve had in my career and business has been intrinsically linked to my ability to connect, develop and maintain key relationships along the way.

Now as an investor working in VC firm that backs early-stage businesses across Africa, one of the most important investment criteria we use is the quality of the leadership team and the dynamics of their relationships. The ability of the founder to attract strong and complementary talents around their idea is more important than the business idea itself. In the end, we invest in people more than plans.

My second lesson is that when it comes to building relationships, it’s important to optimise for the long term over the short term. I call this playing chess as against playing checkers.

If you calibrate your relationship based on what you can get in the immediate, you are playing checkers. And a lot of people will also deal with you for what they can get from you immediately. These often become transactional relationships based on what you have now and not your potential.

Having been a startup founder, and now an investor in early-stage companies, I have increasingly seen the importance of long-term view in relationships as critical to business success.

Even though startup investment can be easily viewed as a transaction, a deal involving putting money in a company in exchange for a proportion of its shares, most of the things I do as an early-stage investor is about relationship building and alignment of purpose than dealmaking. In the end, we invest in entrepreneurs intending to create long-term value together.

My third lesson is to never assume bad intent from others. This might sound naive. But it’s my view of the world and how I navigate it. I believe most people are inherently kind-hearted until they are not. This mindset enables me to engage with people out of curiosity rather than from fear or suspicion.

Are there bad people with wicked intent? Yes, definitely. But I’m not positioned to go through life half-expecting people to do bad things to me. Having some level of expectation about human inherent goodness has helped me to attract, connect with and develop relationships with good people, and in many instances bring out the best in them.

So, I’d like to conclude by asking you to do a simple exercise. I want you to imagine. Imagine everyone you meet as potential nodes of opportunities. Imagine them as an important part of the human chain of serendipity that you’re yet to join. Imagine what you’ll say to the next person you speak to after this talk as if that interaction is a potential invitation to be part of the chain.

What I’m nudging you to imagine is a worldview in which you engage with people out of curiosity rather than suspicion and fear.

In the future, a lot of the expertise and skills we monetise now may be replaced by AI and machine learning algorithms. But our ability to connect and nurture good relationships with other humans will always be our advantage over the machines.

This was delivered as a talk at the TEDxUI 2019 in Ibadan. Thanks to Oyin Sadiq-Mabeko, Yele Bademosi, Kola Aina, Mohini Ufeli, Chuba Ezekwesili, Steve Beck, Niraj Varia, Sapna Shah, Keturah Ovio, Yvonne Okafor, Feyikemi Abudu and Femi Olowoporoku for reading drafts of this.