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. 

While many app developers are trying to replicate Foursquare’s success in the location-based arena, most won’t succeed because of their inability to monetize their apps. Developers can charge for their app, but most elect to the ad-supported model to try and reach the widest possible audience. The problem is the lack of mobile commerce infrastructure for connecting advertising and payment on mobile devices with local merchants.

Location based apps know a lot about their users. The very fact that they know a user’s location gives apps the opportunity to serve relevant geo-targeted ads. If a single, male, 24 year old-user checks in at a restaurant, a nearby bar could offer a  discount on after dinner drinks.

Only now there is the messy affair of presenting your phone to a bartender who doesn’t know about the discount and has trouble manually applying it on the point-of-sale terminal. The solution would be for mobile payment systems to integrate with POS terminals and provide an API for mobile developers to use.

People in the United States don’t use mobile payment because it isn’t easy. If I’m given discounts by Foursquare that can easily be redeemed at relevant local stores, I’ll use Paypal, Amazon, Venmo or another easy payment system.

If the system is simple to integrate with the POS and operate, local businesses will advertise this way because they only pay if app users become customers. Business owners will be able to advertise more because they’re paying for successful customer acquisitions. If apps developers successfully gets users to use local business. app developers will be able to make money and verify conversions because users will apply discounts through the app.

The problem with in-app mobile advertising is it’s not connecting click to mortar properly. If ad servers present app users with relevant targeted promotions and discounts, they will begin to use mobile payment services at local merchants. Mobile app developers need to be given the proper tools to make their apps relevant to local merchants. Those tools need to give those local merchants the ability to increase sales.

There is a real opportunity for a startup to provide the infrastructure for true mobile commerce. Elon Musk, Dave McClure and the other Paypal guys seem to be having a lot of fun with the money they made from an online commerce infrastructure play. Mobile commerce is local and online, which is why the mobile commerce infrastructure opportunity is even bigger.

Note: ‘The Integration of the Day’ is where I take two or more web services and create a HYPOTHETICAL integration. This is not an announcement or breaking news, just the thoughts of a fellow entrepreneur. I’d like to thank Charlie O’Donnell (check out his blog) for the idea.

Today’s ‘Integration of the Day’ combines schedule-sharing tool Plancast with CRM platform Salesforce. Plancast is like a Twitter for schedules, allowing users to broadcast their plans and subscribe to the feeds of other users. Plancast currently is dominated by tech events, providing great business development opportunities for people in the sector. A Plancast integration with Salesforce’s CRM platform would allow Salesforce users to find events that valuable contacts are attending.

User Experience: I would sign in to Salesforce, buy the Plancast app from the appexchange. Salesforce would automatically import my current Plancast subscriptions, after which I would set up a list of companies and individuals that I wanted to do follow. Salesforce would use Plancast data to create a schedule of events based on my list. Salesforce could tell me of possible connections with individuals in organizations by matching our Plancast accounts. I could set up custom alerts to notify me of ‘hot events’ where a high volume of targets will be attending, or I could track where my competitors were going to make sure I had a presence at those events.

Monetization: A Plancast app developed on the Force.com platform would be a valuable premium feature for biz-dev and sales professionals in the tech/new media space. Plancast could sell it in Salesforce’s appexchange to monetize the service. Plancast would remain free, but aggregating the data and combining it with Salesforce’s robust CRM would be extremely valuable to biz dev, and sales departments.

Thanks for reading. To hear what I have to say in bite size chunks, follow me on Twitter. If you have any integration suggestions, leave them in the comments below or email me.

Note: ‘The Integration of the Day’ is where I take two or more web services and create a HYPOTHETICAL integration. This is not an announcement or breaking news, just the thoughts of a fellow entrepreneur. I’d like to thank Charlie O’Donnell (check out his blog) for the idea.

Today’s “Integration of the Day” is a pairing of business oriented social network LinkedIn with daily deal site Groupon. With over 45 million users, LinkedIn is a large community of affluent professionals with considerable buying power. While profitable, LinkedIn only monetizes its members through display advertising and premium subscription fees. Groupon’s daily deal scheme requires a minimum number of purchases before the discount is available. Groupon users share the deals on Twitter and Facebook. The time and volume restrictions have been incredibly successful monetizing users personal networks, with Groupon projecting $100 million in revenue for the year 2010. Imagine if they could create deals to harness LinkedIn users’ professional networks.

User Experience: I install the Groupon application on my LinkedIn profile, checking for new deals everyday. I would find deals from LinkedIn users offering discounts on local enterprise services, for instance an IT consulting or accounting firm would give a 50% discount on a 20 hour package.  I’d check out the provider’s LinkedIn profile before making my purchase, reviewing recommendations and getting feedback on their work through mutual connections. If I decide to buy, I can then promote it through my network, sending out messages to individual LinkedIn contacts as well as tweeting out the offer. My purchase would also appear in my activity stream and in my profile.

Montetization: Groupon has previously worked to draw users to local consumer businesses, but expanding to enterprise sales could prove difficult on the local level.  A LinkedIn integration would allow Groupon to penetrate the enterprise market, opening up a potentially lucrative new revenue stream. Consultants and service providers could leverage their LinkedIn networks as a business development tool, using a Groupon sale to more efficiently lure in first time clients. Providers’ LinkedIn recommendations and connections would allow potential clients to vet them through the LinkedIn network, reducing the time it takes to find qualified consultants. LinkedIn would open up another revenue stream while increasing user engagement as service providers augment their profiles to  utilize the network for business development purposes.

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