Today, my cofounders and I had invitations to three Startup Networking events around the valley: a VC pitch competition @ Stanford, a panel on the iPad’s effect on Journalism @ Google and a Silicon Valley Geek Dinner on the Peninsula. This is awesome. It’s one of the reasons I love Silicon Valley. BUT it’s also damn distracting. No matter how amazing an event is, it always takes away from creating the product, talking to customers, getting feedback…..
Being Miss Congeniality and going to every Startup event within 100 miles is clearly a mistake.
Skipping every event and being Mr. Startup Stealth Ninja is also a bad idea.
Knowing which events are valuable to the company is an art– one that I have yet to fully master– but I have been to literally hundreds of events and have learned a few things about how to filter out which ones are worth the time. (or at least the one’s definitely not worth it).
Rule #1 If the event has the word “Networking” in the title, there is a 98% chance it sucks and a 100% chance there will be a bunch of people that you won’t want to talk to. Don’t go!
Rule #2 Panels are generally a waste of time. This one is very much dependent on the participants and much moreso on the moderator, but usually these things are filled with high-level agreement about startup cliches… “fail-fast… be agile…let me tell you the story of the one homerun investment I’ve had in the past two decades…” Even worse is when artificial audience participation is attempted. I was recently at an event where they allowed audience members to give a 30 sec pitch to a panel of VCs who would proceed to take 20 min to tear their assumptions of the idea apart in front of the 300 person audience. Terrible.
Rule #3 Don’t pay more than $50 for any startup events. EVER. (I am tempted to say to never pay, but I have been to a good event that was $10). It absolutely boggles my mind that entrepreneurs sometimes spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to attend conferences where they might get to brush shoulders with a VC or even worse, to “be seen.” Conference organizers should be ashamed of themselves if they are ever charging startups more than a couple hundred bucks. Buy comfortable chairs or ramen noodles but not event tickets.
If you really think the event/conference/meetup will be valuable to your startup, figure out a way to go for free. (hint: many conferences have very similar looking name tags…others simply never check…) Many of them are sympathetic to poor entrepreneurs and will be open to you volunteering in exchange for a ticket. If the conference is that good, it is worth mopping the floor for a couple hours to get into it.
Rule #4 Never just be an attendee. Make the events count and make yourself memorable. Always look at the attendee list beforehand (facebook, plancast, eventbrite etc all show whos coming…) and figure out who it would be good to meet. Send them an email and mention you will be there and ask if you could chat for 5 minutes. Even better, see if you can give a little talk of your own at the conference. If you go and sit in the back to quietly listen, you aren’t making the best of the conference.
Rule #5 If you want to make the best use of an event, host it yourself. It doesn’t have to be big and elaborate, but invite a bunch of smart entrepreneurs, maybe a couple investors (if there are promising entrepreneurs there, the smart investors will come too) and have a little dinner, board games night, even just a group lunch. The relationships to peer entrepreneurs will be most valuable so truly get to know them rather than “network.”
Let me be clear… I don’t think that all networking events are useless. In fact, there are numerous ones that have been extremely helpful in meeting some amazing entrepreneurs, investors and mentors that I have developed long term relationships with.
For example, Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures hosts a Stanford/Berkeley Founders’ Meetup which is an extremely informal (some food and drinks) and off-the-record meeting of extremely smart entrepreneurs in the valley. Events like those are great for connecting with folks going through the same challenges and excitement as you are.
What I am saying is that every minute of a startups’ time is valuable and an event had better be useful if it is going to be taking away precious hours of product development time. If you are spending half your time schmoozing at SF nightclubs while your competitor is working, you will be killed– no matter how many great people you were sharing vodka and red bulls with.
