Why Communication Is the Backbone of Growth for Startups

Let’s set the scene. You’ve spent over a decade studying in your specialist technical field, then another three years building a software startup that’s on the precipice of its high-growth stage.

Moving along the growth trajectory in this scenario will hinge on your ability to disseminate your ideas and make sure that others believe in them too. However, the previous stages of your career were dependent on you being a master at harboring knowledge.

As Steve Jobs once famously said, the most powerful person in the world is the storyteller and now is your time to become a master of communication.

Storytelling will help you land in-demand engineers for your team, nail the delivery of your fundraising pitch, or win that all-important sales contract with a big client but these are also some of the most common hurdles for founders.

Computer scientist and entrepreneur Rajat Mishra is keenly aware of the impact poor communication can have. After overcoming a childhood stutter he then had to navigate through the hurdles of international business communication, where his success as an executive hinged on whether he would be able to deliver presentations of a consistently high standard and engage with his audience effectively.

He founded Prezent, a communication productivity platform, to help others overcome the same challenges that he had been facing throughout his life. The company, based on the belief that  “everyone deserves a fair chance to bring their ideas to life,” recently went public with Fingerprints 2.0, a tool created to make it easier for everyone to understand their unique communication style.

How to leap over communication barriers

Miscommunication in the workplace can lead to everything from poor team morale and high staff turnover to a direct loss of sales and revenue. Reverse engineering targeted solutions for these problems will deliver some results, but communication in your startup won’t reach excellence unless you realize the importance of individuality and personalization

A survey from the Economist found that the most frequently cited cause of communication barriers is the fact that we all have different communication styles. Yet talks, pitches and presentations are very often delivered using the same set of slides and notes each time.

Mishra created Fingerprints to help founders deliver hyper-personalized presentations using the power of software. “We actually have 60 plus variables that we map into Fingerprints software, but these really boil down into three main overarching categories: Visual, Stories, and Data.”

When creating a Fingerprint, the software can understand whether you have a high tolerance for images and color on slides, whether they prefer to receive a conclusion up-front or be led on a journey and the best way to present complex data points.

And while becoming more self-aware of your own communication preferences is useful, Fingerprints also offers a way to get into the heads of your audience to understand the unique DNA of each listener.

Myers-Briggs for communication

Mishra believes that we instinctively build presentations according to our preferences, whether consciously or subconsciously.

“My first meeting with my CFO was a disaster. When I went back, someone told me to send exactly what I needed, so instead of having 14 points on the board I just asked the question.”

With Fingerprints, this insider information can be unlocked to ensure your presentation strongly resonates with the listener. Mishra has found that executives - especially those who are time-poor or very senior - are keen to let selected groups access their communication preferences as it helps them save time and get to a result more quickly in the long run.

“One of the Fortune 500 using Fingerprints managed to get all the senior executives to create a profile in one sweep just by sending a request,” he commented.

For startup founders, the same approach could be used to understand the unique preferences of any number of investors that you’re hoping to pitch to. Equally, it could be used internally to understand how to better manage software development sprints according to each team member or brief out a project to an agency in the best possible way. Added Danish Ahmed of startuptools.ai, “a startup that doesn't communicate properly is stuck.”

Adapting stories at scale

Once communication preferences are known, Fingerprints can also help to rapidly adjust slide decks according to the communication archetypes of each user. This makes it sustainable and feasible to consider delivering personalized slide decks for each audience member that all relate to the same narrative that the speaker is going to deliver.

Not only that but the software is also being trained to learn to adjust for communication hierarchies within a professional context. This means the software can adjust slides based on whether the presentation is at an individual, functional or corporate level.

With software, Mishra hopes to make it easier to scale good communication with the growth of your company, embed these best practices into your team’s DNA, and ensure consistency, efficiency, and accuracy in all comms.

In turn, this is going to avoid repeated mistakes, slow decision making and wasted resources that will hamper the progress of your startup.

Hacking Audience Preferences with AI

Batman has his supercar, Iron Man a super suit. Some of the most iconic superheroes rely on features and tools to boost their power and prowess for the job at hand.

Mishra hopes that his contribution to the SaaS space can act similarly, acting as a powerful add-on tool that aids business development.

As Fingerprints continues to grow its user base and refine its offering further, everyone will be able to become a communication superhero with the ability to identify and adjust to the nuanced preferences of any audience.