Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupiter Media will be the keynote for the Early Stage Summit a great investor/startup conference we’re hosting on October 2nd. If you haven’t applied to attend yet, I suggest you do, the event is filling up fast.
I would like to officially announce that the Early Stage Summit will be on October 2nd 2008. The Early Stage Summit aims to fill the gap in NYC in the venture community by providing a forum for great companies to show off their products to the top investors from around town and also from around the world.
The Early Stage Summit is being produced by Bootstrapper.com with the help of Richmond Events, Susan Hahn & Associates, Pillsbury Withrop, Mashable, Seedingit.com, StartupHappy.com, SquareSpace and the Connectors Fund.
The goal is simple, allow 15 great companies to present in front of investors who will give live diligence feedback to help the companies understand themselves better. The event will be broken down into Tracks along industries and each will feature a keynote, a panel of investors, 3-4 pitches followed by live diligence from our investors followed by a chance to meet with the companies of your liking in our breakout rooms.
The event is by application only and I urge anyone, investors, entrepreneurs or press that is interested in attending to apply at EarlystageSummit.com. I’m also available for questions if you want.
Coming up soon is the Techcrunh50 and DEMO conference. I would just like to take a minute and thank both organizations for helping build our ecosystem. Some people may not like the fact that DEMO charges to present (if you are accepted), others may not be a fan of Mike Arrington’s abrasive style but at the end of the day – without organizations like DEMO and Techcrunch and people like Chris Shipley, Mike Arrington & Jason Calacanis, we would be missing out on a whole lot of great people and products. So no matter which model you think is better or who you are a fan of – please just thank both them for being an integral part of our ecosystem.
So I recently took over hosting Ibreakfast events. Ibreakfast is the longest running digital media event series in NYC. It’s been around since 1994 and the founder Alan Brody is on a book tour and asked me to take it over. I wanted to publicly thank Alan since it’s an honor to take over such an establishment. We will be hosting some cool events around media buying and startup pitching over the next few months and I hope to see a lot of you there!
This is a follow up to yesterday’s post on social networking. I would like to share for a minute how i do “social networking” those of you that know me in real life know how generous i am with introductions. My version of social networking works like this. I go to lunch with friend, friend tells me what he’s doing. I say “hmm…” here’s a few ideas and get back to my desk and send out 5-20 introductions to help said friend. Thus friend just tapped my social network for a purpose. Friend follows up with introductions via email, arranges calls and meetings. Relationships are created as a result.
Let’s compare this to online social networking. I login to facebook, browse for hot girls, send friend requests, poke. forget. or login to facebook, get friend requests from multi-level marketers in china, befriend him, turn down his offer of ginseng on rice with a touch of lice. Forget.
Which do you think is more valuable?
So I recently introduced a billionaire to friend whose created a billion dollars in value in the last decade. My email was 2 sentences, like always, A meet B, B meet A. Yet they both responded extremely quickly and took it seriously. I thought it was pretty cool, I must be doing something right that people respond immediately to my introductions…now let’s see if I can execute on my latest ventures J
So it seems I host the most events out of anyone in NYC tech at the moment. I just wanted to share with everyone why I do it. It’s called being the influencer and connector. People come to me and seek me out because I am the gatekeeper to the network that is NYC tech (one of them). It’s a great place since the host can get away with being aloof and everyone trusts the host naturally so it’s very easy for me to build relationships. When you have a chance to run the show, take it and run it, hosting events and conferences are a very valuable thing for your reputation building - as is having a popular blog.
So when is it proper to go to a meeting with someone for coffee or for drinks. In our community, those are the two primary points of contact. Coffee and booze. I always like mixing things and suggest drinks because it’s great to see what people are like when they drink. You can really learn a lot. You can also go on a lot of almost, maybe, perhaps accidental dates. You know, meeting someone for a bite and drinks at 6PM of the opposite sex. While it might be a business meeting on paper, agreeing to meet someone of the opposite sex at night for drinks can easily imply something else and lead to fun and awkward situations. Meanwhile coffee makes me hyper and I have to pee a lot. Anywhoo…I don’t think I really had a point to this post but its something to think about…
So I recently met Esther Dyson for the first time. She is perhaps the most connected person in NYC technology. Just breaking through her investments at Edventure Holdings and it is dizzying. This is coming from me, Richie Hecker, the King of ADD in NYC. She happens to be one of the nicest people i’ve ever met and the first person in a while that I met that I couldn’t help. I really couldn’t think of a way to help her. She helped me and made a couple of introductions for me. Very helpful and very nice person and smart and connected…
Todays post is dedicated to David Blumenstein, the owner of David.com. David has been in the Alley for something like 20 years and founded groups before most of us were born. He was the CTO of Mercer Advertising and somehow knows everyone. He has been a very dear friend to me and has helped me out a lot in the past. I owe him a lot. He happens to run the Hatchery with another friend, Dr Yao who he introduced me to. If you are in the Alley are not connected to David.com, then you need to go out and meet some more people.
So I wanted to share with everyone something very exciting - I will be hosting Ibreakfast.com events for the next couple of months. Alan Brody who has been holding the events for over 15 years is going on a book tour and asked me to take them over. It is a complete honor. When I got into the events game a little while back, i thought ibreakfast had the best speakers and brand in NYC. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to host the events.
We have 2 in planning, Media Buying 2.0 on July 23rd and iEvening, Startup Pitching on July 30th.
Let’s eat!
So I’d like to muse for a moment on second tier relationships. You know when someone introduces you to someone else. This is a very important thing. Sure, you may have just met the first person but the odds are that the second person that the first introduced you to, did not grill them on you and thinks you know their friend forever. It’s really simple, people value referrals. A quack now becomes a contact, a contact now becomes a friend. All because of social acceptance. This is true social networking and its what I do - play connector. However, if it’s not a fit with the first person - simply see if you can get them to pass you off on someone and leverage that referral!
So I just wanted to fill everyone in on the Personal Democracy Forum. PDF2008 is going on today in the gorgeous Rose theatre in the Time Warner Center. PDF is the ultimate intersection of technology and politics and has more amazing speakers that I can count. It took 15 minutes just to read the bio’s of the speakers - and it was only a paragraph on each! Sauntering around on the floor and you may be lucky enough to run into Andrew in his white suit or Craig Newmark or Scott Hieferman loitering around along with most of the tech community.
Andrew & Dawn that run the show are really great and I wholeheartedly support. Together, they are the Tipping Point for TakesAllTypes when Andrew got us coverage in the NY Times and Dawn at the Tech Meetup (thank you Scott as well).
If you want to see what the next couple of months of news will look like check out the PDF to see where/how/who/what will be said by our great politicians in the next little while.
So everyone, I wanted to tell you about an amazing conference happening next week, the Personal Democracy Forum. The PDF is a great conference run by Andrew Rasiej and is the Main Event for the cross section of politics and technology. It should be a great show with amazing speakers such as Arianna Huffington & Esther Dyson. With the election coming up, it should be a packed event and an eye opening experience. I recommend everyone attends it as I will be there. Check out the PDF!
Richie
So recently i’ve been talking to one of my old partners that decided to go to law school - of course he’s not going to be a lawyer - it was just a break for him - he’s going into a new startup but he asked me how I built up my network … let me quote him below…
“you have that advantage as you are in NYC ….. do you just randomly email people and be like “lets have lunch” , what do you do?
btw, i spent a solid 20 minutes on bootstrapper, i’m impressed buddy, i’m kinda glad that the world is being exposed to your mind, in all its eccentricities ;)”
Now the second half of that quote is clearly an ego boost for me but let’s focus on the first half. Do I do just email people and ask them to lunch? Sometimes. It actually works. Ask people you admire if you can buy them a cup of coffee because you look up to them. 1/3 times someone will likely say yes. Of course if you come off like a stalker - they will say no. But be simple and polite and it could work.
I usually meet people via my network and friends but probably meet one new person a month just by reaching out cold. When I do, I always do so on neutral ground when I can and never try to do business with the person, I try to learn and see If i can help them. Then, people are more likely to try to help you - if you provide value first.
To conclude, simply asking people for coffee or a drink can be all you need to get your feet off the ground … and running…
