Bootstrapper.com - Confessions of Serial Entrepreneurs

Networking today is flawed.

Most events are flawed.

Most events are boring.

Most events are a waste of time.

Why?

Take for example an investor panel. You have 4 investors on a panel and 40 entrepreneurs in the audience. The panel lasts 2 hours, followed by Q&A, followed by every entrepreneur going over to every investor shaking his or her hand and asking for money. The investor usually says “sounds interesting” or “no” or “ok”, no real feedback is provided in those 20 second and often times the investors feels / looks annoyed being approached.

Let me go further.

The entrepreneur doesn’t give a shit what the panel has to say. He really doesn’t. He doesn’t want to hear about how you turned a $2MM investment into $100MM. He doesn’t want to hear how you fucked up investing in pets.com. (except maybe because then he may think you’re dumb enough to invest in his bad idea)

The entrepreneur wants to find out 3 things:
1) How can i get the investors attention?
2) How can i get a meeting with the investor?
3) How can I get the investors money?

Does the panel serve any of these purposes? No.

Now let’s look at what the investor wants…
1) Network with his peers
2) occassionally meet a smart entrepreneur to invest in

What he doesn’t want it a hoard of gold diggers looking for cash.

The standard panel networking format does not help anyone. It is a waste of time - though you can still meet people and I still go to them - i just disagree with them.

A VC friend of mine always says “Always appeal to the lowest common denominator” no one cares how fancy your tech is if its too complicated for them to use it.

So what’s the solution?

Now this is a shameless plug for my own investor networking events - however I DARE you to find anyone who has gone to one of them that doesn’t love it.

Have a quick speaker or two make a simple speech on a specific topic. Limit it to 5 minutes per speaker, 1-3 speakers max. Followed by Q&A. Cut out the panel discussion no one cares about.

Then let anyone get up and give their elevator pitch to the group for FEEDBACK. PROACTIVE feedback. Let anyone there chime in with advice, questions, comments etc…max of 5 minutes per person total. Then after, if any investor is interested he can approach the person who had the idea separately after.

This way the entrepreneur gets real and quality feedback and the potential to interest investors WITHOUT pitching them directly.

This also does another thing. It allows people to build relationships. Maybe the idea is bad but because it wasn’t a straight shoot down, real advice can be given and accepted without hard feelings. Nothing kills a conversation quicker between an entrepreneur and a VC than the words “i’ll pass”.

This way the open forum serves to quality people for one another and provide real feedback and advice. it also is stress free and pitch free networking and involves no bullshit hobnobbing.

just my 2 cents…

Yes and no. Usually yes. However there are levels of ADD. There is ADD people that can’t function and others that can. Some take meds, others drugs, others booze, broads or baseball… everyone needs an outlet…what you need to watch out for is a serial entreprneur that is burnt out - that is usually someone who has usually successful and burnt his own house down so to speak. He then typically will try to start a million things at once (i’ve been guilty of this) and will fail at all of them because he won’t have the balls left in him to operate, he’ll just do a lot of things half ass - now they may all be good ideas and great work - but he’s just not ready for the commitment.

A serial entrepreneur that just recently had a blowup at his own expense is like someone who just broke up with his wife, not because he cheated but because he spends his life at the office and his would have PREFERRED that he was cheating, at least he’d be home sometimes. The dozens of half ass startups are like the bimbos you date for quick flings after a breakup…nothing that will last, a little pleasure and then you cry.

So what to do?

Stay away for a bit, let them cool down, usually takes about a year. The guy has fucking post-traumatic stress disorder, he was just shot in battle because he didn’t look before crossing the street. Give him a break and sometime and don’t write him off. He’ll be back and probably be more successful then you. He just needs time.