Ask HN: How do you work with holding companies?

We’ve had success as a startup working with privately held companies, but our encountering things we’ve never dealt with before working with new clients that are owned by a holding company.

A few example challenges:

* an exec said they “didn’t understand what we do” but won’t take their team’s word on approving a project their team really wants

* we’ve demonstrated that we could save the business a significant amount of money, but there isn’t a pre-approved budget for them to spend so they don’t seem able to find budget

* when we introduce new tools, even established ones like Google Sheets, the IT dept at the holding company is almost hostile about allowing it

As a team, we’re familiar with helping companies identify problems, create budget to solve it, getting IT’s buy-in and then deliver great results.

That doesn’t seem to be the way to win the support from holding companies.

Questions we have are:

how do we get into a productive conversation with the people at holding companies?

How do we help team members at our client feel safe when the holding company is involved (they often do everything they can to avoid interacting with them)?

Is there some other way to approach these kinds of clients we aren’t seeing?

Or is this a kind of client we should simply avoid?

Would love to hear your stories, challenges, and advice. We’re interested in learning all we can!