Startups succeed when their vision – and their product – matches up with real needs and expectations in the marketplace. Many of these startups begin with a product and/or service they want to offer and try to find an audience for it. Instead, they should start with what they want to accomplish or what need they want to fulfill then create a product that allows them to attain that objective. The ultimate accomplishment, of course, lies in fulfilling customer needs so compellingly that the company’s products become the dominant options in their field.

Quantifying customers’ motivating needs and finding ways to satisfy them puts a company on a path toward establishing a customer-focused identity. Without the right personnel, that path quickly becomes a difficult climb. Hiring the ideal team means looking for people who are committed to customer satisfaction and who understand that customer trust is the foundation of company success. To build that trust, a company must show that its actions match the identity it presents for itself. Companies that demonstrate this form of trustworthiness gain customer acceptance on the basis of consistency, congruence and self-aware intelligence.

At 1NCE, for instance, all these attributes are intrinsic to what we do. We operate on a lean basis, just as a startup avoids wasting its resources on any activity that does not create value for customers. We have built our organization to be and remain agile and flexible. We do not silo functions, ideas and activities. In fact, ours is a 360-degree culture in which our salespeople understand our technical details, our technical people know marketing and our entire company functions without artificial structural divisions.

Our customer-centered, agile culture begins at the top with the CEO of 1NCE, Alexander P. Sator, hiring the right skills for our team. Staff members make intrinsic contributions without the need for a gatekeeper to tell them what to do or to give them permission to do it. Each of us is empowered to move toward fulfilling our customers’ expectations in ways that we know will make a positive difference.

Along with our agile mindset, 1NCE has made a commitment to continuous improvement. Our focus on quality emerges from our customer-centered identity. Some customer expectations remain unstated, motivating us to continue seeking needs to fulfill and questions to answer. As we continue to explore the best ways to offer new connectivity solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT), we also find innovative ways to understand, serve and anticipate the challenges that our customers trust us to help them solve.