Networking is essential for startups: in order to build trust and credibility in your business you need to be visible and to make personal connections. Whether you want to recruit, attract funding, or win clients, it’s the personal touch that will win people over.
You almost certainly need to build new contacts as you get your startup off the ground and, if you’re innovating a brand new field, there may be no pre-existing networks for you to join. So how do you go about building your own network?
The first step is to identify what your networking needs are. Networking isn’t (just) socialising and you need to be selective about the events that you choose to attend. If you’re searching for investment then you might want to attend a different event than if you’re looking for possible clients. Select your events carefully and familiarise yourself with the list of attendees ahead of time to ensure that you know who you should try to meet while there.
Remember that networking is never one sided. Listen as well as talk. It’s great to have an elevator pitch handy but by far the best contacts are made when you take the time to find out the other person’s needs. Give to get. Networking is all about identifying a people who can help each other.
Rely on word of mouth. Every contact you meet is a potential source of many others. Don’t be afraid to ask who else they think you should meet and, if possible, to ask for an introduction. Pay it forward, too. Offer appropriate introductions to your close contacts. A close-knit network is more likely to endure than a series of one-to-one contacts.
Search for leads everywhere. Some incredible contacts have been made at 40,000 feet above sea-level. If you sense an opening, explore further: find out what the person next to you really cares about and see if there’s a fit with your startup.
Use social networks, but not exclusively. An approach on LinkedIn can be a great start to a working relationship, but try to move that contact from the virtual to the real world if you can. People are still more likely to remember and to trust people once they’ve met face-to-face. And do customise those LinkedIn contact requests. That’s just a quick way of showing you actually care about talking to the person.
Seek introductions wherever you can. The great advantage of social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter is that you can see who is connected to whom. If you know that there’s a certain VC whose portfolio is just crying out for a startup like yours, see if they’re connected to anyone that you know already. Make contacts with the other startups in their portfolio, too: they’re the best source of information about potential funders and about their fit.
But don’t just request an introduction: put in the groundwork and really earn it. If you want Bob to introduce you to Alice, you have to convince Bob that Alice would be really grateful to be introduced to you. As a bonus, if Bob is convinced that your pitch is a good one then he’ll help you to make it! Everyone likes to be credited with the beginning of a successful working relationship. Just imagine how nice it is to be able to say: “Oh, that huge success? You know, I got them together with their investor.”
Never forget to follow up. Organise your contacts after every networking event. Make sure that you have a spreadsheet, Rolodex or contacts list and keep it current. Get back in touch with an “It was so nice to meet you,” email. Remind the contact what it was that you had in common and they’re more likely to remember you later on.
Always be yourself. You are your startup. If you’re looking for a good fit between your potential investors, clients or colleagues, you want them to know the real you. Your time is too precious to spend it trying to be something that you’re not.
Cherish people who are different to you. You might have a real flair for design but no eye for numbers. While it’s nice to network with other design-enthusiasts, you’ll need some number-wranglers in your life. A good network should cover all the bases that you don’t.
Networking is always a big investment of time and effort but there’s no doubt that it’s crucial to the success of any startup. It gives you reach and diversity beyond what you can manage in-house, and it’s still by far the best way of finding the best fit between your startup and your future collaborators.
Paulina Bozek is the co-founder of social entertainment startup INENSU. In this talk she shares the insights that she’s learned from her years in social gaming.
Paulina spoke about the virtue of building communities before content in her early (9:05 AM) talk, opening the program for the Saturday of HackFwd’s Build 0.8 event.
INENSU are focusing on two platforms that cover two inherently social interests: music and fashion. SuperFan on Facebook encourages users to share artist-related activity in their timelines. Closet Swap encourages users to share their real clothes via virtual wardrobes as part of a campaign to highlight sustainability issues in fashion.
Paulina says that INENSU wants to break free of the “content schedule” model and demonstrates how this can be done. “It would be amazing if we didn’t need a content schedule and we could just think about building the infrastructure to let users entertain each other,” she says. She contrasts the “content schedule” model with the “feature schedule” model that is followed by the defining platforms of our time like YouTube and Facebook. These platforms are so successful, she believes, because they put communities rather than content at the heart of the platform.
She stresses that the idea of social networking is not new, and that we have always turned to friends for recommendations and ideas. The online social network has a stubborn ratio of content creators, curators and lurkers, however. She estimates that around 70% of users are still passive consumers of content (lurkers), 20% are active sharers of content, only 10% actually create content and only 1% create content actively.
The challenge, as she sees it, is to build in easy ways for lurkers to become curators, and for curators to share more. She highlights Tumblr’s “reblogging” and Facebook’s “like” button as examples of “easy user generated content”. She also explains how the Facebook Open Graph API is opening up new possibilities for “share moments” and the possibilities that this opens up for custom interactions.
“It’s hard not to go back to Facebook and to think about how to use [its] social plumbing and architecture to maximise our own services,” says Paulina. In this talks she identifies what “virality” means on Facebook now, which channels are working for content dissemination, and why fan pages aren’t the be all and end all of user engagement.
Watch the video to get the examples of how INENSU designs its platforms to maximise “share moments” in order to engage, not just the minority who create content, but also the vast majority who curate and consume it.
For more videos for startup founders, see Passion Meets Momentum.
As reported first by TechCrunch Europe, Fantasy Shopper has recently closed a financing round worth $3.3M, led by Accel Partners and New Entreprise Associates. Fantasy Shopper joined HackFwd at the end of 2010, and developed (in stealth) and launched the incredibly addictive social shopping game in October in the UK. They also cleaned awards tables in the UK and the US, most notably first prize at the Amazon Web Services Startup Challenge as the first non-US company. The traction and real numbers have proven the potential of the product, and HackFwd is proud in congratulating the team for the success and the rapid progress. We strongly believe that the backing now announced with the leading technology investors in the world is exactly the right move, enabling Fantasy Shopper to concentrate on rapid growth and going from strength to strength. Congratulations to the team! And if you are looking for a new challenge in development or UX design, make sure to check out jobs at Fantasy Shopper.
In this lively talk, Roberto Bonanzinga from Balderton Capital asks whether VCs help or hurt entrepreneurs and offers some answers – some of which might come as a surprise.
According to Roberto, there are lots of ways in which a VC can damage or even kill a startup. This might be a message from an unexpected quarter, but he knows what it is to sit on both sides of the negotiating table. “[At Balderton] we have very strong entrepreneurial DNA. Not because we read about it in business school in a book called ‘Entrepreneurship’ but because all of us did it and have been working in the space,” he explains.
The most important lesson he learned as an entrepreneur was that the selection process should be symmetric: entrepreneurs should be as selective about their choice of VC as VCs are about their choice of investments. And it’s not as simple as deciding who are the good and the bad VCs. It’s all about assessing the fit. It’s more important to find a VC that you can build a relationship with than it is to play the statistical game of sending out 100 pitches in the hope of a one or two percent conversion rate. “If you do decide you need cash, step back and think who would be the right VC,” he says. “This is a business that is about people, it’s about interaction.”
He says that lack of alignment is the most common reason why VCs end up damaging their investments. Sometimes it’s a lack of alignment in the timescale that the VC and the entrepreneur want to work to. Sometimes it’s a lack of alignment over how much money is needed. Surprisingly, he says, over-investment is more likely to kill a startup than under-investment.
How can you know if a VC is right for you? Roberto suggests two easy tests. The first is to ask around. What do the other entrepreneurs in their portfolio think? The second is to assess the VC’s level of passion. Are they committed enough to use your product? Are they committed enough to want to sell your organisation, to help you recruit, to help you find other investors?
In this talk, Roberto also shares the key danger signs that tell you if a VC isn’t right for you and explains how best to approach the ones that are. He compares finding the right VC with the process of finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. In the end, he says, it comes down to three things: “personality, experience, and passion for your product. Get someone that is in love with what you do.” Watch Roberto’s presentation to find out how to meet your match.
Find more talks for startups from the video site Passion Meets Momentum.
Jason Goldberg, founder and CEO of Fab.com is passionate about design, and he made the decision to shutdown a prior startup and retooled to follow his passion in Fab.com. In this talk he explains why this bold move was the path to success. Fab.com recently raised a $40 million venture round.
Jason spent 2010 building his latest startup, Fabulous. By early 2011 he realised it wasn’t getting the traction he’d expected. “In the current internet climate if you haven’t gained traction in a year’s time, the advice I give folks is to try something else. You can only iterate so far,” he explains. “And you can’t iterate your way to a business model.” He shut down the company over night and started again.
It sounds like a tough decision but to Jason and his team it was self-evident. They asked themselves three questions about their business: was it something that could be really big? Was it something they were passionate about? And was it something they could be the best at? They decided that Fabulous didn’t fill those criteria and, that if they could pick one thing and be the best at it, it would have to be design.
“It wasn’t a pivot, it was a restart,” says Jason. They walked their investors through their reasoning and those investors wisely chose to stay on board. In February 2011, Jason decided to focus exclusively on Fab.com. They spent three months building the product and launched on the 9th of June.
The strategy paid off. From launching in June 2011 the site now has over 1.3 million users and generated over $20million in revenue last year. Jason ascribes the success to the fact that they focused exclusively on building a product that they were passionate about, that there was a market for, and that they could be the best at.
That passion transmits itself to the customers. Over 50% of Fab.com’s users come from social sharing. “That’s not something you can force,” says Jason. “It has to be because your users love your product and tell other people about it.”
In the talk, Jason offers 21 lessons they’ve learned over the first nine months of Fab.com’s existence. The advice ranges from the managerial (“Measure everything”, “Focus on your core”) to the philosophical (“Maintain perspective”, “Make mistakes”).
There are some surprising insights along the way, such as why Fab.com stocks products that they never thought they’d sell (but did anyway), and why Fab.com isn’t in the design sales business. Watch the video to find out how Fab.com went from zero to hero in nine passionate months.
For more talks by founders for founders, go to Passion Meets Momentum.
Jason Goldberg’s super-insightful blog post on how Fab.com raised their recent round. Jason’s talk at Build 0.8 is following up in the next post.
betashop:
Let’s face it, fundraising can be a real pain in the ass for the entrepreneur.
It takes up a ton of time that can be otherwise spent managing the business.
Sure, it’s a necessary evil, but it’s also typically a big distraction.
It’s also a lot like dating. You have to go on a lot of first dates…
Marco Börries has built three successful startups, including StarOffice (later known as OpenOffice). He shares his experience on how founders can be better leaders, and what he is doing differently now that he is running his fourth startup.
Here are summaries of the three of Marco’s six insights. If you are a founder, or want to be a better leader, watch this video.
“You are it.” Everything starts and ends with you. As a leader, you have no excuses, nothing else to blame or to default to, no ‘but’. Being a leader means it might get lonely sometimes, but it all starts and ends with you.
“Trust needs to be given before it can be returned.” Trust is important, but you need to entrust people with something before you can expect them to trust you. The problem with startups is that when you start, everything is unknown. Trust is therefore possibly the only thing that you start building on in the beginning, and as a leader you are responsible for creating that trust.
“Ask the questions that you do not want to hear the answers to.” You need to go out of your comfort zone to do this, in a big way. Trust your gut, and if it seems difficult, make sure you ask the questions about it. It is painful but it is much easier to ask difficult questions upfront than to get your face pushed in the mud.
Watch the video for the examples and the insights. And watch more videos from our expert talks at Passion Meets Momentum. And if you have - or want to have - a startup, see Pitch in Berlin for your opportunity to come and pitch to HackFwd at our next Build event.
Pitch in Berlin is a pitch contest organized in connection with our Build events in Berlin. The next one takes place March 10th, and the applications are now open. The audience consists of top investors, startup veterans, future stars and members of the press.
Application window remains open until 10. February, 23.59 pm GMT. Check out the TechCrunch TV coverage from the previous event, with a focus on Pitch in Berlin, and read about the first pitch event to get an idea of what you can get just just by getting invited to pitch. And if you want to know more about what HackFwd offers to startups, check out the HackFwd Experience.
Apply here, or send a friend you know to apply, too.
Torsten Reil, CEO of NaturalMotion, spoke at HackFwd’s Build 0.8 event on how to create a hit iPhone game.
NaturalMotion Games started out as a game technology company, and their Euphoria-technology has been used from Grand Theft Auto IV to Pepsi TV ads (check out the Pepsi ad 3:00 into the talk). With the introduction of the iPhone, Natural Motion moved into creating new types of mobile games and among them, have created multiple big hits for the iOS. NaturalMotion’s five paid games have had over 12 million downloads. In this talk, Torsten shared his 15 tips for creating a homerun. Watch the video for a discussion on all of them, with some great examples and numbers.
Game idea
1. Be unique. There are lots of games out there, and you need to differentiate with your game. Torsten’s example is My Horse, a free-to-play virtual pet-type game that’s seen over 5 million downloads.
2. Let them snack. Cater for players who play for a few minutes at a time. Many mobile users play for short amounts at a time.
3. Play together. Also cater for social, asynchronous gaming, even where the device is passed around or the gameplay is shared online.
4. Know your audience. There are huge amounts of ideas, but you have to understand how your (potentially very large) audience relates to the game idea.
Design and gameplay
5. Simplify. Don’t make people think. Things you think are obvious may well not be. See Torsten’s examples starting at 10:20 from Natural Motion’s Backbreaker (5.5 million downloads) and how they iterated the design, and, how introducing a tutorial to My Horse increased first-day retention from 38.5% to 44%.
6. Make them feel good. People don’t like to suck. Especially the iPhone audience likes to play to succeed in the game. Especially the casual gamer needs a “success event” early on in the game to convert into users.
7. Click! There’s a magic point where you realize that it just works - but it’s hardly linear, says Torsten. With the hard work, it will come.
8. Polish! Once the core gameplay is there, you will spend enormous effort in polishing it. Don’t ship it until it is ready. This is especially important in games.
9. Polish more! Once you’ve polished it, do it more. You are not hitting diminishing returns doing this, says Torsten, but you are creating the experience, the flow that will make the users stay.
10. Optimize. Use analytics to test and improve everything in the game and around it.
Distribution
11. Get featured. The hard work is done. The key to getting featured is doing the hard work described before, Torsten says. Apple and other distribution channels will want to feature the highest quality
12. You name it. The name of the game is incredibly important. But you can let people name it instead to ensure you use a name that gets people interested in downloading and playing it. Torsten shows how Natural Motion names their games, using My Horse as an example (from 20:00 in the video).
14. Icon = packaging. The icon drives the downloads from the App Stores. You want to have an icon that stops people and stands out on the store shelf.
15. Go viral. The best way for a game to go viral is the old-fashioned way, where people show the device and the game to their friends. Try to create a “word of mouth moment” in the game that the player wants to show other people, Torsten says.
16. Be ready to adapt. Keep an eye on the market, see where the business models are shifting and be ready to move based on that.
You can follow Torsten on Twitter here, and watch more great talks on Passion Meets Momentum.
Delta Strike has been busy over the last days of the year, pushing their latest Santa release two days ago. The new release sees the introduction of two new characters, Commander Kozel and Sergant Noemi, who will guide the players through the new missions. In the end, the player may face the ultimate Shar’dal boss adversary, and upon triumph, receive a pretty special item.
The game also added more items to the shop, more social features such as gifting, and better notifications and effects. The team keeps releasing better and more refined iterations of the game, and Delta Strike is shaping up to be a great social gaming experience. Read the team’s blog here and check out Delta Strike the game.
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