Fred Wilson today updated and reiterated his suggestion to develop on Android first:
Roughly six months ago, I put up a blog post suggesting Android was going to be the dominant mobile phone operating system and that developers interested in the largest user bases ought to start developing…
(Source: marco)
A startup asked me to sign an NDA before chatting last week.
I have been asked this before and want to express my feelings about it.
Never sign an NDA before talking to someone. There is nothing good that can come out from it.
I understand that some companies want to protect themselves from…
(Source: alexstechthoughts)
One of the things entrepreneurs always ask me is how to gain access to high value people and keep them engaged. If you’re smart and knowledgable you can usually network your way into a meeting with anyone in the startup world. While these activities shouldn’t involve a telephoto lens, you do need to perfect the art of almost stalking.
1. No answer means try harder: If you want to meet somebody, then a lot of other people probably want to as well. I’ve hear entrepreneurs say countless times, “I emailed him but he didn’t respond.”
So?
If somebody doesn’t respond, email them again…And again. People who receive a high volume of email might not respond on the first try. Until you’ve received a no, you haven’t received a no. Mark Suster wrote an amazing post on how to connect with high volume people that you should read.
2. People who broadcast their location and plans: If an investor puts on Plancast that they’re going to an event, they shouldn’t be surprised about getting pitched. If you want to meet someone, monitor their Twitter and Plancast accounts and show up. If they’re speaking at an event, you should go. It’s easy to ignore an email. but it’s much harder to ignore somebody in person.
After having a great meeting, a person who later became a member of Standard Start’s advisory board didn’t return a few of my emails requesting a second meeting. After seeing him tweet that he was going to the Public Enemy show at Summer Stage. I hauled ass over there, found him in line, set up the meeting and left him alone. That Friday he joined the advisory board.
3. Find them on the interwebs: A great way to engage influentials is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or wherever else they spend time online. Comment on their blogs, respond to their Tweets, talk to them in an authentic way that is more than just about business. If they Tweet about football or music, that’s the topic of conversation.
It might seem disingenuous, but if you actually share these areas of interest it’s merely another means of forming a bond. Become engaged in their conversations and you become part of their community. It’s a lot easier to gain access from the inside.
4. Seek out their network: It’s hard to get high volume VC’s like Fred Wilson or Mark Suster to respond to pitch emails, let alone take a meaningful interest. Many investors and high value individuals tell you they only take intros from members of their network. This means you might need to get to know someone else to move on to the main prize.
Figure out your target works with and who they talk to online. Try and seek out people who are less prominent than or junior to your target but still close with them. If you form a bond with them, they will usually be happy to provide a warm introduction. Finding founders from an investors portfolio is an especially good way to get a meaningful intros.
This guide does not encourage actual stalking and/or harassment. You MUST be mindful of when you’re being annoying and fake. Remember that being respectful is incredibly important as you are trying to connect with people.
As a blogger for VentureBeat, I have received a lot of pitches in person and via email. While I meet many talented entrepreneurs, a large percentage of them have no idea how press coverage can be used to build their businesses. A lot of PR reps don’t either.
Here are a few tips for pitching reporters via email.
1. Your subject line is the headline of your email. I’m only a contributing writer and I receive a ridiculous amount of pitches everyday. Too many times I’m bombarded with pitch emails with subjects like ‘Story idea’ or ‘Urgent News’.
And…delete.
It’s generic and lazy. Since there’s no context for the pitch, you will be immediately banished to the trash. You need to create a subject line that will appeal to a reporter.
Everyone has a story idea, that’s why they’re pitching me. I’m a human being damn it, pitch me something interesting. Say something funny in your subject line and I’m far more likely to open your email.
2. Figure out which reporter at each news outlet is most likely to love your product and pitch them. At VentureBeat, for instance, if you are doing a comic book related application, Anthony Ha is a comic book fan so you should be sure to pitch him. If you’re doing a location based app, you might want to pitch Cody Barbierri. I get pitched social gaming products a lot, despite the fact that we have one of the best gaming reporters on the planet in Dean Takahashi.
A lot of reporters are generalists, but they have their sweet spots. Search for stories about competitors and other people in the space and see who covered it. Pitch to that sweet spot and your more likely to get a hit.
3. Give us some time to write the story. Nothing irritates me more than being pitched an embargoed story the night before (an embargo is when a company gives a reporter a story that the reporter agrees to publish after an agreed upon time). If you get a reporter to open an email and decide they want to write a story, he/she still needs to research the product and marketplace. If you don’t give the reporter enough time, optimally a couple days, you’ll either get a superficial article that won’t really help you or no coverage at all.
4. Attach a company logo, screenshots, and other images. People are far more likely to click on a story with images and reporters know this. If you give the reporter some art for their story, they’re are already more inclined to write it because they don’t have to go searching for an image. If a journalist has to work less on the mundane stuff, you’re more likely to get some coverage.
There are a number of problems you could mention in the New York City startup scene, but the solutions have been slow to emerge. There have been a few I others have thought of recently that I thought were particularly valuable and should be shared with the community. Many of these ideas appealed to me because they
1. Health insurance: Many entrepreneurs are making a very risky move by working without health insurance. Matt Meeker - EIR at Dogpatch Labs - and Matthew Brimer - Founding Partner at General Assembly- both have thought of some interesting ways to attack this. It would be great if places like Dogpatch Labs and General Assembly could negotiate with one of the PEOs to offer any startup with month to month health insurance plans for early stage companies at a reasonable cost. Founders wouldn’t have to risk their health and the PEOs gain early access to potentially valuable customers.
(Update: Shai Goldman of Silicon Valley Bank had an idea to have Founders Card aggregate coverage for early stage startups. Good call Shai!)
2. Engineers going to Wall Street: One of the biggest problems startups have with attracting talented engineers straight out of school is the fact that Wall Street firms can lock up students far before they graduate. A startup can’t offer jobs that far in advance, placing them at a huge competitive advantage. Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson’s Deputy Chief of Staff Scott Schwaitzberg and Foursquare Co-Founder Naveen Selvadurai came up with what I think is a genius idea.
Somebody should form a company that partners with a dev shop like Pivotal Labs and provides guaranteed full-time job offers and relocation assistance to talented devs from Universities around the country. These devs would be assigned temporarily to different startup projects, with the startups able to purchase the contract for a premium. This would allow the startup scene to have more agile hiring while providing more stability for graduates as companies compete with Wall Street for talent.
3. Recruiting engineers from outside the City: This idea was sparked by Charlie O’Donnell’s idea to give tax credits to companies who relocate developers from around the country. I tweaked it a little because giving tax credits could be perceived to incentivize companies to hire developers from out of town. Instead, I think the City should offer to waive 1 year of income taxes for web designers/developers who move to New York and join a small business (i.e. a startup).
This tax rebate would be about $3500 per participant if on average they were paid $100k in their first year. This would maintain a level playing field for NYC based devs/designers and foreign ones, companies making a decision based upon fit not tax implications. While the City would lose some tax revenues in the first year, program participants would continue to command high paying jobs and add to the City’s tax base.
These are just three ideas I’ve heard recently, I’m going to continue to write about other concepts I hear around town. If you have any ideas, please leave them in the comments below.
At least the kids are still enjoying the snow. (Taken with picplz at Morningside Park in Manhattan, NY.)
As I answered on Quora, an angel investor who asks you for a business plan for a seed stage Internet start-up doesn’t know what they’re doing. An entrepreneur needs a clear vision, clear projections (18-24 months) of cash burn and an estimate of how the business model will work on the revenue…
