{"id":181,"date":"2011-11-11T11:08:20","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T19:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/?p=181"},"modified":"2018-11-11T15:49:02","modified_gmt":"2018-11-11T23:49:02","slug":"startup-networking-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/startup-networking-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Startup Networking Tips: Setting Up Meetings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The following is a guest post from fnBlog Contributor Jason Demant, founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unanchor.com\">UnAnchor<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>On a recent trip to California I tried to network as much as possible \u2013 see old friends, meet new friends and frankly just talk with as many smart people as I can about what they\u2019re working and what I\u2019m working on.\u00a0In this post I wanted to discuss settings up the meetings and the actual meetings themselves, and share some of my learnings from going through this process.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><strong>Setting Up the Meetings<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Most of the meetings I tried to set up were pretty warm, meaning that I had either been introduced to the person or they had been a past <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.unanchor.com\/category\/entrepreneur-interviews\/\">interview guest<\/a> for my <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.unanchor.com\">Unanchor blog<\/a>. I learned a few things from this process and wanted to share them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I sent my initial meeting requests one to two weeks ahead of time \u2013 allowing me time to send a follow-up email if I didn\u2019t hear back.<\/li>\n<li>The follow-up email is more important than the first email. I didn\u2019t look at the exact numbers, but roughly 60% of the people whom I reached out to answered my first email. But my second email was almost 100%. In fact, of the 14 people I tried to setup meetings with, there\u2019s been only one whom I haven\u2019t heard from (he was a pretty big stretch to be honest).<\/li>\n<li>Keep the emails brief.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019ve read to <a href=\"http:\/\/viniciusvacanti.com\/2011\/01\/24\/stop-saying-let-me-know-when-works-for-you\/\">recommend a specific day and time<\/a>. I chose to recommend a block of time instead and let them choose the hour. For example: \u201cCoffee on Tuesday morning?\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>Finding out people\u2019s email addresses is easier than ever. Download <a href=\"http:\/\/rapportive.com\/\">Rapportive<\/a> and then start guessing. When you&#8217;ve guessed correctly, Rapportive will show their profile. <a href=\"http:\/\/justinmares.com\/how-to-find-anyones-email\/\">Read more about this<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>An Example Email<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Subject: Coffee Meeting the 11<sup>th<\/sup>?<\/p>\n<p>Hi [Name]\n<p>How&#8217;s it going? [1 personalized sentence or question.]\n<p>I&#8217;m going to be in San Francisco next week and was wondering if you have a few minutes to grab a cup of coffee and catch-up? Are you available next Tuesday afternoon, the 11th?<\/p>\n<p>Thanks,<br \/>\nJason<\/p>\n<p><strong>Advice Overload!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been watching the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/tv\/shows\/techstars\/\">TechStars Bloomberg reality TV show<\/a>. On the show they discuss \u201cmentor whiplash\u201d. It\u2019s what you receive when meeting with mentors, asking for advice and then receiving conflicting and different recommendations. These past 5 days felt pretty close to that. Luckily, most of the advice didn\u2019t necessarily conflict, but there were many different ideas and directions recommended to take the business.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To be honest, I loved this past week. While it was a lot to take in, I learned a heck of a lot! It\u2019s a week like this that made me realize why the Silicon Valley is the Silicon Valley. I was able to easily meet with numerous entrepreneurs and investors all doing different and interesting things. It makes me look forward, even more so, to moving back to San Francisco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following is a guest post from fnBlog Contributor Jason Demant, founder of UnAnchor.\u00a0 On a recent trip to California I tried to network as much as possible \u2013 see &#8230; <\/p>\n<div><a href=\"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/startup-networking-tips\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[7929,98],"table_tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-startup-advice","tag-startup-networking","tag-startups","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":[],"featured_image_data":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"table_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foundersnetwork.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/table_tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}