The most dear thing you have as a startup founder is your initial customer relationships.
They teach you about their needs, influence your product and your message, provide references to investors and to other customers, and sometimes even evangelize for you. They even teach you how to sell to similar accounts.
Why would you ever delegate these relationships?
And yet many times I see busy founders do just that. They allow some other person in the company to run with these relationships, and, in so doing, lose touch with their most valuable stakeholders. They rationalize that they’re too busy with some other “important” task or that it’s really the sales or marketing leader’s job to manage these customers.
When early customer relationships are managed most effectively, the founder is the primary relationship owner. Other execs and staffers play supporting roles, are there to listen and learn, and can take action items. But when the customer needs to call someone, it’s the founder.
And when the company needs something from the customer (advice, a reference, whatever), it’s the founder who calls.
When it’s done this way, everyone benefits. Don’t let busy-ness or some other siren song convince you otherwise.