Adam Marx

This is a question I've become obsessed with. Mostly because I see so many founders make it harder for themselves than they need to. I partly notice this because I get a ton of inbound cold DM's asking if I'll help support someone's launch. And I love to be supportive, but a better strategy would be to hook me on your mission before asking for anything. It bums me out because I hate seeing great products with cool potential languishing for want of solid introductory or funding opportunities. And I get that so much attention should be on the product itself. It seems like I spend an inordinate amount of time advising founders to start building their network & community *before* they launch in 2 weeks. But just like you're never done fundraising, you're never done networking. Get out there and start having conversations -- you are in control of your own community development!

Please avoid doing this -- trust me, it just kills your reputation. Recently, my friend was expecting to go to work and train her new employee. Then this happened we were both shocked! The person never showed up! Okay, some quick backstory: My friend hired someone to fill a general administrative role in her office. From what she told me after, the person seemed like a good fit, got through the interviews, and seemed like a good candidate. Here s the problem: When they failed to show up, it wasn t even possible to contact them! I asked my friend: Did you try texting them? Sometimes there are emergencies, people get into car accidents, etc. She then shocks me by saying: I tried they blocked my number and email! I was flabbergasted. To walk away from a job is one thing to each their own. But to simply fail to show up on the first day? And go even further to block the phone number & email of your new company?? This is how you can absolutely decimate your reputation. And what does one gain from this?? If you don t want a job, don t take it but don t kill your reputation in the process over nothing. Always think about your network because people remember things like this and it gets around. Call up even last minute and say you had an emergency or you had to focus on a different priority. Just anything to keep from leaving someone in the lurch. Why close future doors on yourself if you don t have to?? Great networking is all about preserving opportunities not burning bridges when you don t have to. Has anyone else experienced something like this too??

You're ready to launch your product (or you will be soon), so naturally your next tactic is to start trying to drum up a little buzz. But it's slow, because you haven't built out the necessary community or support network beforehand. So you start "networking." Only it isn't really networking because what you're actually doing is *selling.* (Or trying to, anyway). And this is where a LOT of founders get in their own way early on. It's critical to understand that networking & selling have two fundamentally different goals. 1) Selling is about completing a transaction 2) Networking is about broadening your ultimate reach Where people trip themselves up from day one is confusing talking with selling. Your networking is NOT going to benefit from simply adapting your sales funnel to it. Networking is not about a 1, 2, 3-step equation type of dynamic. People are not numbers or data. When you're dealing with people and building networks, you need to account for others' schedules, irrational mindsets, time-lags, and a ton of other factors you can't anticipate and distill into a funnel. Become comfortable with simply having conversations every day in the community that AREN'T centered around "gathering feedback" for your product. (I guarantee that the more conversations you have in the community, the more you will inevitably learn about your product's fit anyway.) When building an MVP, the goal isn t to hit it out to the park with a billion-dollar company from day one. It s to get something out the door, collect as much honest feedback on it as possible, and make incremental improvements over time. Coming in guns blazing works in the movies, but rarely works in reality. The same is true for building networks. Coming into the environment with your seller s hat on from day one, hour one is a surefire way to make sure that most of the people with whom you want to network will never answer your email or return your call. It communicates to them that your only interest is in selling them something or asking for something. And that makes all your networking transactional -- as opposed to non-transactional. If you want access (to a network of VCs, journalists, supporters, etc.), then you need to be engaged in the dialogue in order to exist and find the on-ramp to the broader relationship. And you can t do so in a selling capacity, because this will effectively shut the door in your face. So where does that leave you? How do you build a network if your main talking technique -- selling -- is unavailable to you? You do so by engaging with the people in your network *before* you start launching anything. *Before* you start asking for things like time or value. Obviously none of us have time machines, so if you haven't started this process already, you can't go back six months. But the next best answer is to start now. Okay, so you already launched your company or product. Then that means you should be spending as much time talking to people in the community (NOT selling!!) as you do iterating the product. I guarantee that the more time you spend talking in the community (and not selling!), the more people will be naturally incentivized to take a look at what you're working on. Remember that the point of any conversation is to get to the next conversation. That conversation may end in a sale, but that doesn't mean you're "done" with the dialogue. Maintain that conversation and see how it can grow in the long-term.