Found+READ: Comments on stories by Wil Schroter

Unknown Founder — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 20:22:43 GMT

Are all your LinkedIn contacts “Qualified Investors”? (http://invest-faq.com/articles/regul-accr-investor.html) If they are not you may run into trouble down the road. When a company I was involved with took an investing round we had to pay off all the previous investors who were not qualified so that our books were clean for a possible IPO or purchase by a public company… expensive use of funds and not easy to explain to investors that are being bought out because they are not rich enough to participate (anymore).

Solofo RAFENO — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 19:46:04 GMT

Absolutely correct.

Me too, founder of a new startup (Beezbox), I gonna do a “Friend raising” by proposing to all my LinkedIn contacts a great deal to getting into our project at a price that will be probably 1/10 the price proposed to VCs on the 2nd round.

We got already 2 friends as investors (ticket is around USD 30K) and we’re looking about 10 of them
For more info, check my blog: http://emergingworld.blogspot.com

Wil Schroter — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 19:55:06 GMT

@ Mike – I don’t think you can be too secretive about a startup. I’m sure in some cases it can help, but generally speaking, if someone else can steal your idea just by hearing about it, you don’t have that strong of an idea.

mike simonsen — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:43:02 GMT

Well put Wil. I’ve never been a super-diligent networker, but our strategy with this company is to be as wide open as possible with as many people as possible.

We’re open about our business model, our technology, strategy, and tactics. We share a lot and get more in return.

What we’ve found is that people really want to help you succeed. By sharing all the goodies, we end up developing real friends. Some of them turn into deep strategic assets for the company.

I watch so many tech entrepreneurs hide their plans. They don’t trust anyone, fearing their ideas stolen. Then they ask, “why won’t anyone help me?” These guys are most certainly not friend-raising…

Wil Schroter — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:02:59 GMT

unknownfounder – love that pic.

I was trying to point out that there is definitely a difference between making friends and networking or “friend raising”. The term “friend” here is probably mis-used.

I wanted to write some more about the good karma aspect, in that you need to give more than you plan to recieve. I agree with that completely, but in 800 words or less I wanted to focus on the financial benefit which somehow seems to strike a more relevant chord for entrepreneurs!

Unknown Founder — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:28:50 GMT

I have found it amazing how many of the successful people I know have a seemingly natural ability to not only network, but do so with a large number of people. Along with natural social skills, that allow them to participate in engaging conversations with almost complete strangers, data like names, phone numbers, email addresses seem to naturally settle into their memories to be easily accessed years later. Those of us with out this genetic talent must build a “Friendship-Development Plan” like Wil suggests in order to compete.

christian briggs — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:57:32 GMT

Great post, Wil. I completely agree with Deirdre. Honest friendraising (seeking mutual benefit) – and integrity in doing it – has consistently yielded amazing returns for me – sometimes many years later.

Deirdré Straughan — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 11:02:37 GMT

Very smart, and a lot more fun than dry old “networking”. But you have to keep your karma balance positive: don’t just think about what these people can do for you, but what YOU can do for THEM. I’ve “given away” many favors over the years, and am always thinking about making useful (to them) connections between people I know. I don’t think in terms of immediate return, but the returns have come in, in a big way, whether months or years later.

Jonathan Bruck — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:59:43 GMT

Great analysis, I have been through a few startups and I have seen similar things.

@bob – In my first startup (I was 21) we had the same problem with the ‘professional sales’ people we hired. They were unable to be effective, but when a founder was part of the sales pitch the results where usually the opposite.

Was it because we didn’t prepare the sales people to communicate the benefits or give them enough incentive? If we took the time to hire someone giving them incentive and preparing them is the fun part.

What we eventually learned, was that in a startup you are selling an ‘unproven’ system and in our market (electronic ticket for sports franchise) – ticketing managers are relatively conservative group. While the customers might have liked the product benefits unconditionally, they weren’t buying on the product benefits alone and needed more to make the leap and that meant interacting with the founders directly to see the passion and commitment that was backing the product.

Until a product reaches a ‘proven’ point in their respective industry the founder is a necessary part to closing deals.

Ultimately, we changed our sales approach where we had a much smaller sales team to do lead generation, get the pipeline going and loop in founders and account managers for face-to-face pitches. This way the prospective client got the benefits pitch, the founder passion commitment pitch and also was interacting upfront with the person who would be their day to day point person for the relationship moving forward.

Wil Schroter — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:21:56 GMT

@ Bob – of course you can’t grow by never hiring anyone!

The point was that you shouldn’t overlook how important the Founder’s “touch” is on every aspect of the organization.