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MenuHow to network from a place of abundance? To network and build your community without sounding pushy, or worse, needy?
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I make a point of introducing myself to people online who are unlikely to become clients. You for instance.
That's not altruism. It's curiosity. Learning about other people's business models, industries, unique challenges and goals -- even absorbing their phrases, vocabulary, and style -- prepares me for some other branding client later on.
Being attuned to other people is the starting point of real life interactions, isn't it? Business networking is no different from wandering around from the car mechanic's to the coffee shop and striking up conversations with people along the way.
As JFK once said, "My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." When networking, I encourage you to approach it with a "give first, get later" mindset. You'll find the more that you offer to help others, the more their offers to help you returns in greater abundance.
First of all, I LOVE this question. My answer is coming from what Life is teaching me: abundance begets abundance. If you are operating from a belief that you are lacking abundance, then you will be pushy and needy. So of course that is how you will sound. But if you resonate abundance, you will attract that to yourself. So, if the community around you doesn't reflect abundance, you have to look within. At your deepest core, are you fulfilled? At your deepest truth level, do you feel joyful, inspired, creative, satisfied? If not, resolve that first. Then your "sound" will resonate the joy inside of you. And so will your community.
As a business law lawyer, I do this often in the startup space. Everyone builds business their own way, and mine involves a lot of networking. What I have learned is that, when YOU are truly excited about your project - product, service, whatever it is you are doing - all you need to do is to find people active in the same space and talk about it. Often, all that is needed to tag someone's interest in what you are doing is to be interested in it yourself. If you are networking simply to "build community" it is even easier, because you aren't trying to push your product (i.e. make a sale) right away (which is where sounding needy and pushy normally comes in). In addition to sharing the interesting (and hopefully innovative) thing you are interested in, you should listen attentively and actively to the things the other person is doing. The best members of your "community" will be people who have complementary projects and knowledge to yours. Simply having this truly enthusiastic and authentic conversation, and following up/maintaining the relationship, is how you make connections that last. Happy to chat further if you like.
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For every success story in Silicon Valley, how many are there that fail?
It all depends on what one decides to be a definition of a "success story." For some entrepreneurs, it might be getting acqui-hired, for some -- a $10M exit, for some -- a $200M exit, and for others -- an IPO. Based on the numbers I have anecdotally heard in conversations over the last decade or so, VCs fund about 1 in 350 ventures they see, and of all of these funded ventures, only about 1 in 10 become really successful (i.e. have a big exit or a successful IPO.) So you are looking at a 1 in 3500 chance of eventual venture success among all of the companies that try to get VC funding. (To put this number in perspective, US VCs invest in about 3000-3500 companies every year.) In addition, there might be a few others (say, maybe another 1-2 in every 10 companies that get VC investments) that get "decent" exits along the way, and hence could be categorized as somewhat successful depending on, again, how one chooses to define what qualifies as a "success story." Finally, there might also be companies that may never need or get around to seeking VC funding. One can, of course, find holes in the simplifying assumptions I have made here, but it doesn't really matter if that number instead is 1 in 1000 or 1 in 10000. The basic point being made here is just that the odds are heavily stacked against new ventures being successful. But that's also one of the distinguishing characteristics of entrepreneurs -- to go ahead and try to bring their idea to life despite the heavy odds. Sources of some of the numbers: http://www.nvca.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ven... https://www.pwcmoneytree.com/MTP... http://paulgraham.com/future.html Here are others' calculations of the odds that lead to a similar conclusion: 1.Dear Entrepreneurs: Here's How Bad Your Odds Of Success Are http://www.businessinsider.com/startup-odds-of-success-2013-5 2.Why 99.997% Of Entrepreneurs May Want To Postpone Or Avoid VC -- Even If You Can Get It http://www.forbes.com/sites/dileeprao/2013/07/29/why-99-997-of-entrepreneurs-may-want-to-postpone-or-avoid-vc-even-if-you-can-get-it/MB
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What tools to use for mobile Prototyping ?
My 2 favourite are: - www.uxpin.com - www.flinto.com Flinto is by far my favorite for mobile. I also us www.balsamiq.com for anything wireframe. Sometimes I jump into Sketch http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/ for more high fidelity mockups using their Mirror feature http://www.bohemiancoding.com/sketch/mirror/ Hope that helps. P.S. There's a tonne of Mobile UX experts on Clarity, many $1/min - call them, you'll learn so much. my2cents.DM
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What is the average series A funding round at pre revenue valuation for a enterprise start up w/cutting edge tech on verge of our first client.
With all respect to Dan, I'm not seeing anything like that. You said "pre-revenue." If it's pre-revenue and enterprise, you don't have anything proven yet. You would have to have an insanely interesting story with a group of founders and execs on board with ridiculous competitive advantage built in. I have seen a few of those companies. It's more like $3m-$5m pre. Now, post-revenue is different. I've seen enterprise plays with $500k-$1m revenue/yr, still very early (because in the enterprise space that's not a lot of customers yet), getting $8m-$15m post in an A-round. I do agree there's no "average." Finally, you will hit the Series A Crunch issue, which is that for every company like yours with "cutting edge tech" as-yet-unproven, there's 10 which also have cutting edge tech except they have customers, revenue, etc.. So in this case, it's not a matter of valuation, but a matter of getting funded at all!JC
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How much equity should I ask as a CMO in a startup?
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What percentage of VC funded startups make it to 100m+ revenues in 5 years or less?
100M+ in revenues in 5 years or less does not happen very often. As an example of one sector, here is an interesting data visualization (circa 2008) of the 100 largest publically traded software companies at that time that shows their actual revenue ramp-ups from SEC filings (only 4 out of these 100 successful companies managed this feat, which themselves are an extremely small percentage of all of the VC-funded software companies): How Long Does it Take to Build a Technology Empire? http://ipo-dashboards.com/wordpress/2009/08/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-technology-empire/ Key findings excerpted from the link above: "Only 28% of the nation’s most successful public software empires were rocketships. I’ve defined a rocket ship as a company that reached $50 million in annual sales in 6 years or less (this is the type of growth that typically appears in VC-funded business plans). A hot shot reaches $50m in 7 to 12 years. A slow burner takes 13 years or more. Interestingly, 50% of these companies took 9 or more years to reach $50m in revenue."MB
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