Last night at Pitch & Pretzels, hosted at KPMG’s offices in Cologne, the focus was naturally on ideas.
What problem does the startup want to solve?
What market is it addressing? How big could this become?
How convincing is the team?
And, of course: how do idea, capital, and execution come together?
But another question stayed with me: even if the idea, market, and team are compelling, how critical is a resilient web of relationships?
With co-founders. With investors. With employees.
With first customers. With suppliers. With cooperation partners.
Later perhaps with corporate partners, boards, or buyers.
Each of these relationships brings expectations and agreements with it. A startup is not merely a product looking for capital and a route to market. It is also a web of commitments, dependencies, resources, trust, and shared expectations.
I wonder whether an underestimated part of value creation lies precisely there.
Because even with the same idea and the same combination of assets, I can imagine two startups: one creates value, the other fails to gain traction. Perhaps because time horizons, risk appetite, role expectations, and the desire for control were never brought into alignment across the wider relationship network.
