Many times in the framework of purchasing policies, experience is a determining factor in endorsing working with a supplier. However, although the insurance logic makes business sense, we should not lose sight of the fact that companies in their startup phase or start-ups can bring multiple benefits to corporate companies. 

Benefits of working with Start-ups 

• Agility: a company that is in its genesis has dynamism, the ability to change focus and provide specific solutions to real problems based on trial and error; which leads to an innovation environment that can be an enabler to obtain learning for our company. 
• Attitude: a company that wants to obtain its first relevant clients will firmly commit to creating success stories. It is very different to be just another client in the portfolio than to be an essential ally for the growth of a start-up. 
• Risk: many times our companies are not willing to take risks, doing so with the support of an organization that lives in an environment of volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity is a way to iterate new options and think outside the box assertively. 

How to start?  

These are some specific recommendations to embark on the adventure of working with start-ups: 

• Identify categories: there are some categories in which trying new options for goods and services is a more ideal path. Categories in which we are unfamiliar or new to us are ideal for seeking allies who are in their early start phase. 
   
• Challenges: having specific and limited problems mapped is a first step to pose challenges to companies, which will come with solution options, which will allow us to evaluate and select an ally to solve it together. These challenges can be materialized with open corporate programs calling for start-ups, being an option to be a seedbed and even investment options for the corporate company, having visibility in the market that positions us as a company open to innovation and support. to entrepreneurs. 

• Intra-entrepreneurship programs: motivating our collaborators to undertake business within the corporation opens the doors for people from our team to be empowered and to be the bridge with market options in which early stage companies are evaluated. In this link you will find a guide test that will allow you to know your entrepreneur profile.

It is essential to understand that an early stage supplier will not have all the traditional approval credentials, so our processes must be updated and adapted to this reality. Likewise, it is key to understand that, in these asymmetrical power relationships, the real spirit must be, in addition to solving our needs, supporting ventures. Selflessly and without suffocating these companies, we must understand that we have a social responsibility in these exercises in order to support start-ups to take a step in their consolidation. 

From purchases we can leverage innovation, solve problems and build the region through allied ventures.