Networking For First Time Entrepreneurs
Effective networking is an extremely important tool for first time entrepreneurs. Irrespective of target goals – meeting potential investors, finding business partners, establishing technology partnerships, or simply spreading the word around about your new venture – networking provides the necessary channels to meet those goals if utilized properly.
Robert Ochtel offers some good tips on “dos and don’ts” of networking for first time entrepreneurs in his blog post titled ‘Some Truths About Networking for First Time Entrepreneurs‘. I especially like his comment on how networking is really focused “Socializing”:
“Networking is really no different than any other socializing activity. In fact, if it were referred to as “socializing”, instead of networking, I believe it would be less intimidating to first time entrepreneurs. The word “networking” seems to have an underlying performance-based stigma associated with it………A better approach is to attend each networking event with a positive attitude and hope to meet one to two individuals you can possibly create a personal connection with.”
It’s true that people are far more relaxed in social settings (with friends and family or casual gatherings) than in networking events. As Robert points out, this is due to “performance based stigma” associated with networking events that creates an expectation of walking away with contacts that are potentially valuable for you or your venture. In this case, the concept of “value” is essentially misplaced. Networking rarely generates the type of contacts and relationships that create an immediately impact on your venture overnight — for example, you cannot meet an investor and expect him to invest in your company immediately. Instead, focus must be on cultivating mutually beneficial, long term relationships that might potentially add value to you and your venture in the long term.
Following up with the contacts you meet at any event within a week or so of that event is also important step in building a relationship with that contact. Networking does not end when you meet a person at a conference or an event – but continues way beyond the event. When you meet someone at a networking event, you are just someone they “met at an event” – like many others they might have met that day at that particular event. Following up and maintaining a continuous dialogue will give you an opportunity to distinguish yourself from the pack and stand out.
Here are some “do’s and don’ts” of following up and keeping an open ended conversation going:
- Do send an email within a week of meeting the contact, giving them the context of your meeting such as date and place of the event, any specific conversation you had with the contact, etc.
- Do follow the blog of the contact if there is one and contribute to the conversation on the blog thro’ comments.
- Do follow the person on Twitter – this is effective and non-intrusive way of keeping up with updates of the contact.
- Do Not send a LinkedIn connection request immediately — they don’t know you well enough yet to be on their list of connections (this may not apply to someone who is an open networker).
- Do Not send a Facebook connection request immediately — again, they don’t know you well enough for you to be on their list of friends. Most people also use Facebook exclusively for managing their personal network (and LinkedIn for professional) only and it might be a long time before you can connect with them on Facebook at that level.
To expand on the “targeted networking” Robert talked about i his post, here are a few more tips on how to network effectively.
- Give before you receive: Key to developing effective long term network is to be willing to give without an expectation of receiving. Share knowledge and resources with the people in your network and all that “good karma” will come back to you eventually when you need help from your network.
- Contribute to blogs: Take part in the conversations on the blogs you follow and contribute comments, feedback and resources back to the community.
- Volunteer: Volunteer for a not-for-profit organization that is a better fit for you and your venture in your target industry. In addition to giving you an opportunity to give back to the world, it also gives you an excellent channel for networking.
- Join professional associations:Joining a professional association that matches your (or your venture’s) area of expertise is also an effective way to be part of a community of people with similar interests.
- Attend local meetup events: Find and attend a meetup event in your local area. Depending on the topic and area of interest, there are several meetups happening in every city, every day. Try a few in your area until you find the ones that fit your interests and profile.
- Organize networking events: Another sure fire way to meet new people is to organize a networking event yourself. These events can be as simple as a happy hour in your favorite restaurant or a meetup in a local coffee shop or even a breakfast event organized by you or your company.
Networking is a tough but crucial component of the first time entrepreneur’s overall strategy for personal and professional success. I myself am practicing most of the tips from above and from Robert’s post — and several others are already on my networking road map.
Got any more tips on networking for first time entrepreneurs ? Share them here. In the mean time, get out there and start networking !
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Why Do We Need Visual Models ?
One of the questions that often comes up during a discussion on Model Driven Development is “why do we even need visual models”? The question varies based on the experience and extent of use of modeling within the target audience – but the essence of the question remains the same.
Modeling is an inherent part of human life — as they say “a picture is worth a thousand words”. A picture can communicate information better by hiding the complexities and displaying only the relevant details. For example, when we look for directions we tend use the map representation instead of the textual directions as the map provides us with just enough details to visualize the directions. Models also have been used in several disciplines including science and engineering for a long time. CAD/CAM models are used in engineering to model engineering parts and structural models are used in architecture to model large structures and buildings. Irrespective of the problem domain, models provide a simplified abstraction of the complexity involved in that domain. While models do not have to be visual, most models are visual and the visual representation further adds to minimization of complexity. Different models can be used to capture different characteristics of the problem domain and the type of diagrams used to visualize the model of a specific problem domain really depends on the problem domain itself.
Visual models have also been used in software engineering to different extents depending on the context, skills, time and tools available. Depending on the size of the organization or team working on project and the complexity involved, no modeling step may be involved in certain implementations. Developers go directly from requirements to coding and no models are produced during the lifecycle of the project. In other cases, models drawn on white board are used to facilitate discussions around design ideas and modeling stops when the discussion ends. In most cases, models are used primarily for communication among various groups involved during the early stages of the project – during requirements gathering, analysis and design. The primary intent of these models is to capture a high level view of the system under consideration and to present a common view to all parties involved. These models could be technical architectural diagrams, data models, use case models, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, etc., and are drawn using tools such as Powerpoint or Visio or a more formal UML modeling tool. However, these models are thrown away once the development starts since it is hard to keep the code and models in sync as the requirements change during the remaining life cycle of the project.
Today’s systems are complex with many moving parts (thanks to modern multi-tier and distributed architectures) — models enable us to cope with this complexity by providing a visual abstraction layer that focuses on the higher level concepts in the problem domain and de-couple the “what” from “how”. For instance, imagine trying to understand the dependencies in a large system by looking at the code vs. looking at visual design models (use case models, component diagrams, class diagrams and activity diagrams, etc.). Depending on the level of detail desired, the needs of the target stake holder and the choice of architectural framework (TOGAF, Zachman, etc.), multiple views or perspectives of the entire enterprise architecture can be captured in various models including use cases, system architecture, data flows, object models, business processes, physical network, deployment nodes, system dependencies and database schemas, etc.
In summary, visual models provide us with the following important benefits:
- Minimize complexity by capturing complex moving parts in multiple views, enable clear overall view of interactions
- Enable effective communication among stake holders, business analysts, enterprise architects and software developers by providing a common view, language and notation
- Facilitate collaboration via model sharing, transition and refinement between domain experts (business modeling), architects (system modeling) and software developers (analysis, design and implementation)
- Increase developer productivity and shorten the development life cycle by providing ways to generate executables from models either at design time (code generation) or run time (executable models).
As I mentioned earlier, in most traditional code-based development approaches, these models are merely used as design artifacts that provide a starting point for an extensive coding exercise where the higher level details captured in these models are translated into lower level details based on the target architecture. What if the models we created are semantically 100% complete and are immediately executable instead of merely being design artifacts? This is the promise of Model Driven Development and more on “Executable Models” later.
SXSW Interactive 2009 – A Wrap Up !
I was in Austin over the weekend for the SXSW Interactive 2009 conference and wanted to share some thoughts and observations with everyone. This was my first time at this conference and I truly did not know what to expect going in. My decision to go to the conference was pretty much last minute and I didn’t have enough time to prepare properly for the conference — other than watching an intro video “How to Rock SXSW” by Shama Hyder of Shama.tv.
Anyways, here are some of my observations:
- I did not expect such a crowd at the conference – most of the sessions I attended were so full that some folks could not even get into the room. Despite the volume of attendees, I thought the event was very well-organized and all the sessions were right on time.
- Most of the sessions were interactive panels that are primarily intended to engage audience, cultivate conversations and spur new ideas – which is very different from other technical conferences. It was all about getting a feel for the current status of social media and overall tech landscape, and figuring out what the future can hold — I am sure more than few aspiring entrepreneurs walked away with few more ideas in their head.
- Overload of hashtags on Twitter — there were so many tweets with #sxsw hashtag that it made it impossible to search for any relevant content. I guess that goes to show the prevalence of twitter and how many people are actually using it these days.
- Response time on AT&T’s edge network left a lot to be desired — I had no service on my iPhone pretty much most of the time. You can see people lining up against the glass windows of the building during breaks, hoping to catch a bar or two ! Thanks to the excellent Wi-Fi network setup by the conference organizers, I was able to use my iPhone for browsing and twittering from inside the convention center.
I attended several sessions and interactive panels – but the following three stood out for me in terms of the content and information they provided:
- Future of social networks — by Charlene Li. Really liked the the delivery style of Charlene – very conversational and engaging. She says social networks are like air and will permeate everything we do online AND offline. According to her, the three things that are key to an ubiquitous social network are identity;who you are, contacts;who you know and activities;what you do.
- Social networking in health, e-Patients, Data & Privacy — hosted by John Grohol. I got there 10 minutes late and I could not get in — the room was packed ! Discussions in this interactive panel focused on the role of social networks in health care and the implications on privacy of health data. The audience were very engaged in the conversation and I heard a mix of optimistic and pessimistic views regarding the use of social networks in health care. In spite of the hesitations expressed by some, it’s obvious that social networking is spreading deep into health care, which is evident by the number of tech start ups in this area.
- How to fund a start up:Pitfalls & Opportunities — hosted by Jamie Rhodes and Chris Shonk. An excellent interactive panel where the hosts shared quite a bit of useful information with the audience on this very popular and generic topic. Jamie says an entrepreneur must question the need for funding at every step — a surprising advice coming from an angel investor ! Other tips included what to watch out for before signing a term sheet, how to handle investments from your friends and family, how not to dilute the coomon stock if at all possible and of course why bootstrapping is the best way to go for the first time entrepreneur !
Looking back, I now realize that I did not take full advantage of many aspects of the conference. In the end though, I am glad I attended as I walked away with more knowledge, information and potentially more relationships. I really enjoyed the experience, the interactive panels and most of all the interaction with people with similar interests. It’s been a truly positive and inspiring experience !
I am sure I will be back next year — only better prepared to take advantage of everything the conference has to offer !
Ashok
