Hank [BS/MSEE,
MSM $$$, Ph.D. Mgmt] teaches Learn from a 17 year old young girl!
*Nobodies* can build up their contact list with little effort!
Posted on May 21st, 2007 by Jessica.
Categories: Jessica’s Life, Business, Social Science.
Many people ask me how I get access to meeting successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and investors. People seem to automatically assume that without a jumpstart, they’re unable to meet important people. As a result, they put little effort into expanding their network.
I was a 16 year old kid from New York and knew nobody in San Francisco. I decided to fly out and spend a few days there for my winter break. Before coming, I spent several hours emaiing people through linkedin and scheduling casual meets with these prospective connections. I had no valuable connections on linkedin when I began. I went to the search page, found the members who had the most connections, and immediately friended them. By doing this, I instantly had access to 25% of all members on linkedin through 2nd and 3rd degree connections. I found smart individuals I wanted to meet and asked for introductions to them or found their personal email address by searching their name on google. From this alone, I’ve made 15 or so valuable connections.
I finally flew out to San Francisco on my vacation and began to meet with these people I met on linkedin. It was a very manual process, and I had a 50% response rate. For the next few days, I began searching for events on upcoming.org and meetup.com. I made an effort to go to meetups such as NewTech and Sfbeta, and found events on upcoming.org such as “I Don’t know to CEO†at Stanford as well as the many Web 2.0 Expo Parties.
I came to realize that people in web 2.0 are very open to meeting and helping others in the field. I emailed the founders at Pairwise.com, Buythislook.com, Zaptix.com, Reddit.com, Justin.tv, etc… and got about an 80% response rate. I took the time to meet with all of them and became good friends with many! In the world of connections, I do agree that the “rich become richer†in that once you have some valuable connections, you’re able to meet others through a simple introduction.
Having spent less than 15 days of my life in San Francisco, I have a nice list of people I can feel comfortable considering my friend. All of this should come to show that ANYBODY without connections to begin with can establish themselves in the valley with just a little bit of effort. I use linkedin to meet new people, but prefer facebook and in-person socialization when it comes to maintaining those connections.*
I believe connection is a huge aspect of business. Especially as an entrepreneur, because your network could be your immediate investors, partners or customers, it does not matter where they stand they could be part of something in your business quota. I too can relate connection to my field of study. I study electrical engineering, at first I did not “dare†meet professors on a casual basis, because I just generally thought it was out of place for a student to do so. However, after consulting with graduate students, who have been in the field for a while, told me it is always best to make those connections early. After countless efforts through internships and through personal introductions, I now know well-renown professors not only at Purdue, but in South Korea and in Hong Kong too.
I love this story because it hits directly on one of the main points I have always believed - which is that being comfortable meeting new people has a lot less to do with whether one is an extrovert/introvert and a lot more to do with how much one practices and is willing to take risks. I have a friend who swears he is just an introvert so no matter what he “can’t” meet new people because he isn’t good at it. I am always telling him that if he just kept practicing he would improve and build confidence, but he just believes that because he is an introvert, he just can’t do it. I think it is essential for entrepreneurs in particular to just keep trying to take risks and put themselves in new social situations so that they are constantly fine tuning the art of conversation. The Seyet founder who spoke to us today also talked about the importance of being able to network on the spot at any given time and how much that has helped his company. It is essential and this story is a great reminder of how great risks can lead to great payoffs.