The Entrepreneurial Thought Process in Action – ProjectJobs_
Photo by EducatedNation
In my last two posts here and here I laid out what entrepreneurial (effectual) reasoning is, the process it involves, and the underlying logic & 3 principles behind the entrepreneurial reasoning.
Now I want to show you a real life example of how this thought process works in action, because remember the entrepreneurial thought process is all about action, action, action, without any elaborate planning.
I recently have begun a new project which I’m calling JobShoots for now. As my personal bank account was nearing $0 I started frantically looking for a part time job, contract job, or anything I could find on sites like Monster, Yahoo Jobs, Jobster, etc and I kept running into a major problem. Every time I applied or called in about a job offer someone else had already beat me to it and the position was filled. I couldn’t get the job postings fast enough by going to the individual pages and I didn’t want all that job information to clutter up my RSS reader of Email Inbox.
I had an idea about a month ago that there should be Twitter accounts that inform job seekers about opportunities that come up in their geographic location. Instead of having to check a job site everyday, the available job opportunities would be “pushed” to them in their twitter account, which someone can subscribe to in their specific city. The main benefit to job seekers is they can be better informed about job opening and find a job quicker and easier.
In line with the entrepreneurial process I created the twitter account Jobs_SLO and pulled several RSS feeds from job listing websites into my Twitter stream (If your confused with all the twitter lingo check out the Jobs_SLO page and you can get a better understanding of what I am talking about). I threw up the page really quickly just to test out the concept and to see if this is something people demand and if people would actually use it. There was no cost to me besides my time and a little Yerba Mate Tea.
Good thing was people actually used it. I gained 100+ subscribers in less than two weeks but the bad news was the RSS syndicator I was using was crap. Since Twitter only allows 140 characters in the posts, job descriptions would be cut off, the links would be wrong, and overall the postings were in horrible quality. But despite all this people still came and demanded my content.
I let the project just sit for about a month and I didn’t do anything with it until I came across the SSE Ventures program yesterday. My friend happened to tell me about it since he knew I ran Innovation Quest and the Cal Poly Business Plan Competition, and told me I should check it out. I did and its pretty amazing that Stanford has pulled together student government money to fund entrepreneurial projects started by Stanford students (Wow I wish Cal Poly could do something similar!) and I decided to check out the company’s website that recently got funding from SSE Ventures which is the company DiffBot.
DiffBot makes a product called FeedBeater which specializes in taking dynamic html pages and turning the updates into an RSS feed, exactly what I needed for Jobs_SLO. So I thought to myself what the hell and gave FeedBeater a chance. It took a day for the feed to become functional but to my amazement it creates a very clean 140 character summary of the Job Description, the Industry, and a Link to the job postings I wanted to communicate to my twitter followers.
Now that I am slowly figuring out how to make the content good for job seekers, I thought to myself if this kind of content is demanded in San Luis Obispo County (which is only 200,000+ people strong) why wouldn’t this work in other cities and county’s? With this in mind I created:
To test out if this is really going to work in these other larger cities.
Bit by bit I am just trying stuff out and throwing stuff out there and seeing what happens. I have no idea what is in store for ProjectJobs_ but I am keeping my senses open to unexpected randomness and taking advantage of any opportunities that come my way.
If you have any ideas of what I should do with ProjectJobs_ or who I should talk to please leave it in the comments below or email me directly at chris.r.mccann@gmail.com
What Makes Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurial? Part 2
Photo by JamesWatkins
This is Part 2 of the series What Makes Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurial? If you missed Part 1 check it out here as this will be a continuation of the last articles ideas.
To sum up Part 1 there are two main types of logical reasoning when solving complex problems: Casual Reasoning and Effectual Reasoning. Casual Reasoning deals with knowing the set of means or inputs and planning effects given these inputs. This is the prevailing thought process taught by universities and management training programs around the world
Effectual Reasoning on the other hands starts with who you are, what you know, and who you know then imagines the possibilities and combinations, then jumps directly into execution without much regards to planning at all. This is the thought process favored by entrepreneurs.
In Part 1 we laid out the two forms of reasoning and began to explain the processes behind effectual reasoning. In Part 2 I will explain some principles of effectual reasoning and explore the logic behind the two reasoning methods.
|
Principles of Effectual Reasoning vs. Casual Reasoning |
|
| Effectual Reasoning | Casual Reasoning |
| Focuses on affordable loss | Focuses on expected return |
| Built upon strategic partnerships, teams, and customers | Depends upon competitive analysis |
| Stresses the leveraging of contingencies | Emphasizes pre-existing knowledge and prediction (Eliminating contingencies) |
The three principals we will delve into are:
- Affordable loss principle
- Strategic partnership principle
- Leveraging contingencies principle
1. Affordable Loss Principle
While managers are taught to analyze market and choose segments with the highest returns, entrepreneurs tend to find ways to reach the market with the minimum expenditure of resources such as time, effort, and money. Experienced entrepreneurs tend to not believe in market research and would rather take the product to the nearest possible potential customer even before the product was built.
This falls right in line with the entrepreneurs’ tendency of action and just going for it, instead of sitting down and planning and asking themselves questions. This leaves the entrepreneur open to positive randomness and allows the entrepreneur to maximize flexibility of what ultimate direction to take since the product/service has not been designed and built yet.
2. The Strategic Partnership Principle
Effectual reasoning leads the entrepreneur to look for strategic partnerships instead of doing a detailed competitive analysis and broad based market information gathering. Since the entrepreneur wants to limit to expenditure of resources (affordable loss principle) and launch their company with the lowest levels of capital outlay, entrepreneurs will look to key partnerships and customers very early on even before the product is built.
An example of this is obtaining pre-commitments from key stakeholders to help reduce the uncertainty in the early stages of creating a venture. I experienced this firsthand during an entrepreneurs pitch to a group of top decision makers at our University where the entrepreneur asked for a non-binding commitment at the end of his presentation. If the entrepreneur receives a positive response and a good number of pre-commitments then he will launch his venture and if not than he hasn’t expended any capital in designing his product, only his time.
3. Leveraging Contingencies Principle (or as I like to call it the Lucky Break Principle)
This principle is the heart of the entrepreneurial thought process in turning the unexpected into opportunity. Great entrepreneurial firms are products of contingencies (unexpected randomness that occurs) and the entrepreneurs inside the firm taking advantage of these particular events.
Although it is not the specific contingencies themselves that shape the ventures but it is how the entrepreneur leverages these contingencies that forms of the core of effectual reasoning. The main takeaway is that all surprises are not bad, and surprises whether good or bad, can be used as inputs into the new venture creation process. Casual reasoning tends to focus on the avoidance of contingencies as much as possible.
The Underlying Logic Between Effectual and Casual Reasoning
- Casual reasoning is built upon the logic of “To the extent that we can control the future, we can control it.”
- Versus effectual reasoning is built upon the logic of “To the extent that we can control the future, we do not need to predict it”
This difference in belief opens up the questions: Is the future largely a continuation of the past? To what extent can human action actually change its course?
Casual reasoning favors the belief that the distribution of events can be discovered over time, and the learnable future becomes predictable over time. This is why academics and practitioners spend an enormous amount of time and resources creating predictable models.
On the other hand effectual reasoning favors the belief that the future is not “out there” to be discovered but it is created through the strategies of the players within the system. This might be just a hopeful belief rather than the reality, and many entrepreneurs in the real world fail.
But on the whole entrepreneurs are in the business of creating the future, which entails having to work together with a wide variety of people over a long period of time. Which is why effectual logic is people dependent since the people the entrepreneur brings together to transform the inputs of human imagination into the fulfillment of human aspirations through economic means.
This is why people in the business of venture creation (venture capitalists, lawyers, angels, etc) have always agreed that finding and leading the right people is the key to successful venture creation. And these “right people” need emotional ownership in the goals of the venture and can only be incentivized by the belief that their effects they create will embody their deepest passions and aspirations while enabling them to achieve their best potential.
Have you ever wondered why people would take deep pay cuts, stressful work environments, and social work life imbalance? The paragraph above is the reason why. No amount of money can satisfy the soul of an entrepreneur working in a meaningless job, the entrepreneur craves to be in a place where they can make a large impact and feel deeply connected to the greater mission of the company.
To end Part 1 and Part 2 of this series lets revisit the question what makes entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial? Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurial because they think effectually, the believe in a yet-to-be made future that is shaped by human action thus have no need to predict the future, and since there is no point of trying to predict the future they strive to work and understand with the people who are engaged in the decisions and action that bring our future into existence.
What do you think shapes our future? Please share any thoughts or stories in the comment section below!
What Makes Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurial? Part 1
Photo by Jorge Sato
I just finished reading the most eye opening and inspirational papers I have ever seen before. The paper is called “What makes entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial?” and it was recommended as one of Vinod Khosla’s top reads.
If your unfamiliar with who Vinod Khosla is check out his wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinod_Khosla . He was one of the original founders of Sun Microsystems, venture partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers and visionary of the silicon valley revolution and currently the greentech revolution.
I think it’s safe to say Vinod knows a thing or two about entrepreneurship, and this paper he recommended completely blew my mind away. It perfectly describes the logical processes entrepreneurs go through vs. the logical processes of typical management/non-entrepreneurs apply. After carefully reading every sentence of the paper I thought long and hard about the messages presented, shared it with my friends, had a discussion about it, and now I want to share it with all of you.
There is so much good info in here this will be a part 1 of 2 series where I will lay out some of the main ideas and some interpretation on my behalf.
What Makes Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurial?
In solving complex problems, such as starting a company, there emerges two main types of thinking. The first of which is casual reasoning.
1. Casual Reasoning is the process in which you begin with a pre-determined goal and a given set of means, and the process seeds to determine the optimal (fastest, most efficient, cheapest, etc) alternative to achieve a certain goal. This type of reasoning is taught in general to all MBA programs around the world and in every functional area of business. If we diagramed casual reasoning this is what it would look like:
2. Effectual Reasoning on the other hand is the complete inverse of the casual reasoning process. Effectual reasoning does not begin with a specific goal in mind rather it begins with a set of means and allows goals to emerge over time from varied imaginations and aspirations. If we diagramed effectual reasoning this is what it would look like:
A good metaphor is casual thinkers are like great generals (Ghenghis Khan) seeking to conquer fertile lands and effectual thinkers are like explorers (Colombus) setting out onto voyages into uncharted waters.
People can use both types of reasoning at different times but entrepreneurs have a greater tendency to use effectual thinking over casual reasoning. While both types of reasoning require domain specific knowledge and training effectual reasoning demands something different: imagination, spontaneity, risk taking, and salesmanship. In my opinion this is why I believe entrepreneurs have a greater tendency to be generalists and insatiably curious in many different topics and fields.
To end part 1 in this series here is an outline of the effectual reasoning process
Effectual Reasoning Process
Entrepreneurs begin with three categories of means (inputs to figure out effects/goals), which are:
1. Who they are – tastes, abilities, traits
2. What they know – education, training, expertise, experience
3. Whom they know – social and professional networks
Using these three means or inputs entrepreneurs then imagine the possibilities and implement possible effects that can be created through these possibilities. Entrepreneurs most often start very small with the resources and means closest at hand and move directly into action without any elaborate planning. In my opinion this is why I believe entrepreneurs jump straight into projects without considering many of details involved and prefer action over thinking things through.
Contrast this to casual reasoning, which involves careful planning and subsequent execution, rather than jumping straight into execution. With effectual reasoning plans are made, unmade, revised, and rewritten through action and interaction with others on a daily basis. Through the effectual reasoning process eventually certain emerging effects come together to form clearly achievable and desirable goals like landmarks that point to a path in the wilderness.
However in the classroom setting we teach entrepreneurs a very casual process of thinking: idea – market research – financial projections – team – business plan – financing – prototype – market – exit with a caution that surprises will come along the way.
But the seasoned experienced entrepreneur knows that surprises are not deviations from the path but instead are the norm from which one learns to form a path through the jungle. The unexpected is the stuff of entrepreneurial experience and transforming the unexpected into the utterly mundane is the special domain of the entrepreneur. This is why I believe that entrepreneurs tend to excel in the face of chaos and pressure, and everything seems to turn out ok (when you succeed of course) even through from the outside the situation looks like utter madness.
This concludes part 1 of the series, in the next part I will write about the principals of effective reasoning vs. casual thinking, the underlying logic of these two reasoning methods, and how you can learn and apply these methods to whatever you are doing.
Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the series so far!
Back Home – Video with Jun Loayza from Viraology
I am finally back home in good ol’ San Luis Obispo! I have much to catch up on after being gone a whole week but in the meantime check out this awesome video I did with Jun Loayza from Viraology.com about entrepreneurship, luck, creating relationships with people, having the guts to fail, and more
And here is a direct link to the video http://viralogy.com/blog/blogger/chris-mccann-from-entrepreneurialactivismcom-create-your-own-luck/
More to come soon.. but comment and let me know what you think of the video!
East Coast Trip – Will be back May 16th
Video by mitkav
Hey for everyone that needs to get a hold of me I will be out of San Luis Obispo for the next week. I fly out of Santa Barbara at 2:00am today and will be heading to Philadelphia from Sunday – Wednesday representing Cal Poly at Sife Nationals. Then I’ll be flying out of Philly to New York to meet up with my favorite Beanstockd girls Angela and Sandra, Anton Bernstein from Insight Venture Partners, and have a few raging nights with my good friends.
If you need to get a hold of me give me a call on my cell, I doubt I will do much emailing over the next week.
Learning From Others – My Conversations With a Serial-CEO, Entrepreneur, Inventor, and Venture Advisor to Kleiner Perkins
Photo by JennyHuang
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton
I’m not perfect, and sometimes I think I know more than others. This is a highly fallible position to be in, even with all the experiences I have been through it is still limited and I can always learn something for everyone. Depending on what school of philosophy you look to “true knowledge” is never attainable (or at least a very difficult thing to obtain) and given this viewpoint it is an individuals goal to be open to all experiences with no prejudices and biases.
Given this, one of the toughest personal traits to develop is humility and the ability to put one’s ego aside and learn from other individuals. It’s a very easy thing to say out loud that you are humble but its a very hard thing to internally convince yourself you are truly equal to everyone and to take the time to actually learn from all people.
Without getting to philosophical I had a very humbling experience this week after having lunch with Russell Bik who has by far one of the most impressive and experienced backgrounds of anyone I’ve met before. Russell Bik, is a Cal Poly grad, serial entrepreneurial (was on the early teams of Intel and Sun Microsystems), CEO of multiple Kleiner Perkin’s portfolio companies, and a venture adviser to the Kleiner Perkin’s fund.
During lunch I forced myself to put all preconceived biases aside and attempted to suck in every bit of knowledge he shared with me. We talked about a whole range of topics such as the startup vs. corporate lifestyle, best practices of teams, advisors, negotiation, and courage.
Here are a few of the lessons I took away that I want to share with everyone:
Startup vs. Corporate Life and Career Decisions (Which I’ve wrote about before here)
- You don’t want your only work experience to be a string of failed startups
- It’s good to have corporate experience with a growing company
- Of course there are always exceptions to the rule (Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, etc)
- The reality is most startups fail
- You don’t want to have just corporate experience though, you need a blending of entrepreneurship and corporate
- The downside to corporate experience is you feel like you need to play in the proper channels/bureaucracy vs. in a startup culture you get things done no matter what
Working in Teams
- Companies are all about the right mix of team members
- Each discipline of the team (engineering, production, business) is all equal in taking the company to realization and need to be compensated as such.
Value of MBA’s
- There are 2 main benefits to a MBA
- You experience what is possible and you become not afraid to attain that reality
- Develop relationships with other Alums from that school
Grades and School
- Grades tend to fall once you experience the real world and understand the skills needed to compete in this environment
Advisors
- Listen to people who have been there and done it before, only the ones who have actually experienced that particular situation
Negotiation
- Look very closely to the body cues of people and how they react to the things you say (check out this presentation for more info)
Comparing Life Paths – The Corporate Life vs. The Entrepreneurial & Startup Life
Photo by HaMeD!caL
With June around the corner students around the globe will be graduating from college and making a major decision in their lives: Do I get a corporate job? Or do I choose the path of entrepreneurship and create my own career path?
With my graduation date set for June 14th I have been contemplating the same questions over and over again, and I’ve heard a ton of advice from a ton of different people. I wanted to share some of the best I’ve heard and share the story of what I am planning on doing.
Perspective #1
Ben Casnocha who I’ve written about previously paints the two major life philosophies in a very to understand concept. There are 2 life paths one can take:
- The textbook path to life
- The throw out and write your own textbook path to life
Path #1 - The textbook path to life is a very familiar path, this is the path where you go to college, strive to get good grades, work a few internships, interview with a lot of companies, pick a good stable corporation, continue working the corporate ladder, have a successful life, and be happy.
This is definitely the path of least resistance. The positives are you can work your 9-5 and then after work completely forget about everything related to work and peruse your own interests whether they are partying with friends, traveling to cool places, a hobby, keeping up to date with sports, etc. You work hard during “work time” but your work and life outside of work are kept separate. Life is somewhat predictable, your emotions are easily controllable, and your mind is clear and free of all the worries of work and its much easier to enjoy.
Path #2 - The throw out and write your own textbook path to life is the scary path to life. This is the path where your family and close friends ask what are you doing with your life?! This is the path that has no set rules, no set boundaries, and it is very unique to each person.
This is definitely the path of most resistance. The positives are you can do what you love and express your values & beliefs through the career path you choose. You have the opportunity to make a huge difference and impact to the world but this potential comes at a cost. In this path life unpredictable, your emotions become much harder to control and much more volatile, and the line between work and life can easily become blurry if not cross over completely.
Perspective #2
Jun Loayza, a new friend of mine, who I met at UCLA wrote this very intriguing post on the subject:
http://www.junloayza.com/entrepreneurship/entrepreneur-life-vs-corporate-life/
In it he shares his personal experience of corporate life and his transition to the entrepreneurial life. Here are a few things I took away from his post:
- The corporate life has lower responsibility (there whole team of people who can pick up the slack)
- The corporate life was comfortable and relaxing
- The corporate life did not use his talents to the maximum capacity
- The startup life is a much more riskier proposition
- The startup life is much more time intensive (Jun works 100+ hours a week)
- The startup life forces you to push yourself to your limit and take on much more personal responsibility (there is no safety net)
- The startup life is not better than the corporate life and vice versa, it all depends on what type of person you are and the situation you are in.
Perspective #3
The last perspective I want to share comes from Sramana Mitra, who I was recently introduced to through one of my professors Mitch Wolf.
She wrote an interesting post touching on the corporate life vs. entrepreneurial life with the focus group of the top engineering students from one of the worlds top Universities, Stanford.
http://www.sramanamitra.com/2007/03/09/the-path-to-entrepreneurship/
Here are some interesting points I got from the article:
- Working for a big corporation leads to a narrow skill-set
- The skills required for entrepreneurship are “frighteningly” wide
- Working for a startup might be a better preparatory step to working in a corporation
- Consulting and corporate experience is valuable for a short period of time
My Story
I definitely subscribe the lifestyle of entrepreneurship (hence the name of my blog) much of which has been installed in me though my experiences growing up and especially during college at Cal Poly, check out my About Page for more about these experiences. With graduation coming up in June though I am now finally starting to realize the huge risk I am taking and the amount of work I am going to need to do.
However I think I have finally decided what I want to do (at least after I graduate!) but I can’t release all the info about it now. More details to come soon…
What path did you take? How did you make your decision? Share your story in the comment section!
Video of Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose Talking About Angel Investing, Names, Advisors, Etc
I found this great video on Vimeo today featuring two prominent entrepreneurs Tim Ferriss the New York Time Bestselling Author of The Four Hour Work Week and Kevin Rose founder of Digg, co-founder of Revision3, and Pownce.
There was so much good stuff in this video I decided to write out a transcripted version of what Tim and Kevin said:
Issue #1 – Naming Companies
Tim - How did you name your book, “The Four Hour Work Week”? The first initial title was “Drug Dealing for Fun and Profit”. The Pro’s of that title is it polarizes people quickly, it forces people to love it or hate it, and people would be forced to at least look at it. Tim ended up having to pick a new name because of Wal-Mart and the way he chose a new title was instead of fighting the people with vested interest in the name (distributors, publishers, authors, etc) and rather than turn this into a huge ego battle he created a test.
He took 12 perspective titles and created a google adwords campaign (had title pop us ad sidebar advertisement) and the url of the ad went to a blank page or under construction page, the point of the test was he was just testing the key words. All he cared about was the attention/hits part of the process and ran this test for a week and after he knew by many standard deviations that the “4 Hour Work Week” had the best click through rate compared to the other names. Tim also did testing on the cover by actually printing out variations of the cover and putting them on books in the bookstore. After he sat there and watch which cover got picked up more. This is how he tested his book cover.
Kevin – Kevin has come up with multiple names for multiple companies such as: Digg, Pownce, System, Revision3, and Wefollow. Kevin likes to have memorable, short names. He wanted “Dig.com” but Disney owned it. So Kevin decided to add an extra g because of other successful misspelled companies, like Flickr, Del.ici.ous, and an extra G sounded cool at the time. For Digg he definitely made sure he got the .com.
On the other hand Pownce was brainstormed by the team, came up with it because Pownce was his cats food, and he got the url for free (which is typically unheard of). The misspelling of Pownce wasn’t to hard for people to comprehend but he never got into the level of sophistication that Tim Ferriss did.
Tim – Side note – How did Linkin Park choose their name? Mike Shinoda explained that it was easy, they wanted the .com. They could have used the right spelling for the .net, etc but they needed the .com for the longevity of the brand.
What about natural search traffic? Google Keyword tool (gives you all the top search terms) but the mainstream media doesn’t have time to spell out the name (if it is a misspelling) and explain it.
If your thinking about branding don’t forget to think outside of natural search traffic and even paid search traffic. Don’t be afraid of building a brand yourself if the name is slightly off.
Issue #2 – Angel Investing
Kevin – Kevin personally hasn’t done a ton of angel investing but has done a lot more advisory role stuff. The difference between angel and advisor is if company believes you can help them out (in product direction, marketing, etc) they set aside a pool of shares for advisors. If you jump on as an advisor normally the shares the company offers vest over a length of time. The requirements for an advisor are typically a monthly meeting either with a group of advisors or 1 on 1 interaction, to basically be a sounding board for ideas and provide guidance to the company.
Tim – Advisory shares tend to vest over a period of time (you don’t get all your shares at once) so you have prove yourself as an advisor. The common rate of vesting is monthly vesting on an 18-24 vesting period. Range of equity compensation for an advisor is .025%-.05% or even more if the advisors take a more serious role. Check out venture hacks article on advisors.
Kevin – Compensation for advisors depends what stage the company is in, you aren’t going to get a 1% of facebook but if its early stage stage company .025%-.05% is not out of the normal range. Advising startups is good because it allows you to play in other startups and gives you an outlet to keep your creative juices flowing outside of your full time gig. Advisory role is a way to allow you to not invest a significant portion of your time/resources but allows you to take a role in startups.
Checkpoints/criteria of what you look in before you invest:
- Typically comes from introductions by other angels, people you respect and who have done well in angel investing
- Kevin will go and meet with a ton of companies 3~4 a month and 90% of the time Kevin provides general advice but the companies are too early for real investment. They need to develop a tangible prototype first so he can hold it and touch it and get into the product.
Tim – Some of the companies Tim has invested in are Posterous, Rescue Time and more
Main investment criteria
- Does it overlap with what I am doing?
- The more you can create a Keiretsu and that help each other the better.
- Given that it is much easier to promote them over the media pick companies that can help each other
- Almost always co-invested with an experienced angel that does the due diligence
- Looking for a team that is younger, smaller, and at a very early stage.
- Like a mix between technical person and a business person
- Tim brings to the table his analytics skill and how to up the conversion rate of the model, and the PR side of things.
- Need to see some traction and the founders put some skin in the game and got something more than just the idea
Traffic doesn’t do any good until it converts visitors to users. Take care of the product first, don’t be in a rush, then get the traffic.
Issue #3 – How be and get in contact with advisors or angels
Kevin – don’t just email angels with “I have this great idea…” Actually take the time to build it and get a working prototype out there. Anyone can be an advisor if they have a valuable skill set (ex. Amazing graphic artist, PR person, etc)
To be an Advisor tell the team here is how I can help you, and give them a taste of how you can help. Show them you can something for the team first. Give them some freebies then after talk about how you can formalize the arrangement and make it work for everyone.
Tim - To get an angels attention take action and do something, don’t just talk about it.
The Secret to Success = Follow Up & 7 Tips for Effective Follow Up
Photo by Thomas Hawk
I just came home from an amazing weekend in the Bay Area. I started off by having dinner with Carson one of the founders of Innovation Quest and very successful serial entrepreneur, Eugene Lee one of the key employees of Tube Mogul, Ben Casnocha author of My Startup Life who I’ve wrote about previously, and Saket & Amit from BASES the leading entrepreneurial organization at Stanford.
Many people have asked me before how do you meet and stay connected with all of these incredible people? And today I want to share my #1 secret to life:
Secret to Life = Follow Up
Following up with people is such an easy concept to understand but is a very hard thing to do on a consistent basis. Just the simple act of following up separates you from 90% of everyone else out there and shows that you are committed and dedicated to what you are doing.
A great recent example of incredible follow up was from my new friend Saket Vora from the Stanford BASES program. I met him through my good friend Brian Riley yesterday in Palo Alto and we had great conversations about whether or not entrepreneurship was innate or learned, how universities can implement entrepreneurship programs, and about how BASES and Cal Poly could mutually benefit either.
I got back home this morning and within 12 hours of meeting him, Saket had already introduced me by email to Ricky Yean the new president of BASES and Ricky had sent a follow up email to set up call between us. Just that simple act of following up has given me 100x more respect for Saket and Ricky and makes me even more excited to work with them in the near future!
Here are my 7 tips on effective follow up:
- Make sure you take down the contact info of all interesting people you meet! It’s obvious, but on multiple occasions I’ve completely forgotten to ask for someone’s contact info, so don’t let this simple mistake hurt your follow up chances. Also don’t be afraid of asking for someone’s contact info even if they are famous/respected/seem busy/etc. People are just people, we all put our pants on in the morning, so never be afraid of meeting anyone no matter your background.
- After you have the interesting person’s contact info send a prompt follow up preferably that day or the next day. Follow up works best when its fresh in their memory and they remember who you are.
- DO NOT send a template follow up email. Take the time to craft a unique response to each person, a little bit of personalization will go a long way.
- In the follow up email refer to something you two talked about or had in common. This goes back to #3 and don’t have a generic emotionless follow up email, instead take the time to connect with the other person and refer back to your conversation in the follow up email.
- DO NOT PITCH IN YOUR FOLLOW UP EMAIL. I’ve made this mistake multiple times before and each time led to a disaster or lost connection. Don’t immediately pitch the other person in your follow up email about your business/product/program/etc. The goal should be to create a relationship with the other person not just sell them on what your working on.
- If you can follow up with an action item. I like to follow up with a question which greatly increases my chances of getting a response from my follow up.
- Write a boring but informative subject title. You don’t need to write the worlds most unique title but do make sure it is informative. I like to reference where we met and about the content in the email. For example here is a recent email subject I used:Cal Poly – DFJ Venture Challenge – Pitching Critique
In this subject I used where we met (Cal Poly), what I am following up about (DFJ Venture Challenge), and I reference what the email is about (Pitching Critique).
What are your best follow up practices? If you have tips or tricks to share leave a comment!
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