I have been doing quite a lot of Marketing and PR work lately both for myself and other brands/startups I am involved with. The more time I spend doing it, the more I discover unusual but very cost effective ways people are starting to get the word out. Many startups that are being run by gen-y’s don’t have the financial muscle to compete with the bigger, established companies and as a result we are always looking for ways to reach out to thousands without breaking bank.

1.) Chatroulette: As strange as it sounds, people are actually starting to use chatroulette as a way of pitching their ideas. Personally, I don’t see how effective this can be considering most people don’t spend more than 3 seconds on air before hitting “Next” if they are not keen on talking to you. On my first visit to the popular website, I left and promised myself never to return…no thanks to the 4 male genitals I saw in the space of 20 seconds. However, it does look like chatroulette is much cleaner and friendly these days. Last week when I went back on, I actually got pitched by this one really hot blonde about a vacation planning website and I must say I did go on the site during the chat. I don’t know how many people “nexted” her or how many stayed on to listen to her pitch, but it does look like something 5 out of 10 will stay to listen on.

2.) CNN iReport: Again, this is something I haven’t tried. If you own a startup whose product/service is something that will excite people or something you reckon people might like hearing about, then creating an iReport page could be a good idea. By having a profile here, you have a chance to leverage a good percentage of the millions of daily visitors on the CNN website. I have actually noticed a lot of companies doing this and gaining traction without having to spend a dime.

4.) Facebook Fan Page: With the amazing growth of Facebook over the past year or two, it’s no longer surprising to see some pages rack up as many as one 1 million fans in only a few weeks. In the past, it’s the popular brands like Dell, Coca-cola who had pages with such massive following. Lately though, random funny pages are even starting to overtake such brands in terms of number of fans. Take this page for example, and this. I have heard of companies starting to work with some of the owners of pages with such large following in a bid to leverage those fans, some are even purchasing the fan pages outright.

In the next few days, I will post a couple more ways I have discovered, but in the mean time, if you have any other ideas or ways to market a startup in cost effective fashion, do share!

Ideas are the center of all the growth we have been able to achieve since making fire and the wheel all the way to iPhones and SUV’s. Someone had an idea to improve their lifestyle or the life of others and then put that idea into motion. More often than not we are seeing young entrepreneurs start to talk to each other, in classes, networking events, dorms and bars about ideas. What starts as chatter is starting to become reality with the way Gen-Y has taken an interest to entrepreneurship.

Our latest endeavor, the Rock Star Business Series, started as a conversation I had on the phone with Matt from Under30CEO. We were chatting about college students and how many of them are not as keen on the whole personal branding, social media thing that we are accustomed to with the outspoken group over at Brazen or 20 Something Bloggers. For how many people are using these new tools to find great opportunities, network and form business relationships, there are that many more that are job board hopping and hoping that something falls in their lap.

This conversation led to a business idea that was put together over 2 weeks. We plopped up a site, leveraged our networks and had sales coming in seconds after the sales page went live. Nice conversation, right?

The key here is that we spoke up. Many times people keep their ideas bottled in, thinking they are not good enough, or people won’t “get it.” They will.

They will because deep down we all want to be part of the conversation. We want to be in the loop and use our own connections or ideas to help out. This is evident in many businesses that are starting at colleges and universities across the world right now. Kids are using strength in numbers to kick start their business and most times do not look at it as a business, but as a project. Something fun to pass the time with friends and make some happy hour cash.

Gen-Y is an extremely collaborative group. We team up for sports, book reports, science fairs and our parents combined with genius marketing developed the “buddy system” for going to the mall or parks. Now that we are evolving and getting into situations where we can use our talents and ideas to make changes in business, we are looking to friends and other like minded Gen-Y’s to start companies with.

But, how do we get the conversation started?

The first step is to be proactive with your idea. You do not need all the answers as to how it will work to start talking about it. You only need a concept and an approach to bring it up. Getting the idea out in the open will allow others to give feedback, direction and to see if its realistic or not.

The way to take your idea to the next level is to know who you want to tell. If you are a marketing guy with a software idea, you need to start chatting with programmers, IT pros and others that can give you feedback and ideas. You can meet these people online, at networking events or in the classroom. When I needed a team of developers for an idea I had, I stalked the Computer Science building for a few hours with fliers and handed them out after every class. I organized a quick meetup at the sandwich shop on campus and got a few people to really weigh in on the idea. It was a great success and helped us solidify our startup concept.

Use online collaborative tools. For the new Rock Star course we have sent surveys to people we think are potential customers to get feedback and ask questions about the material. We have opened up the doors to previous customers and partners to test drive the platform and used things like Google Docs and forums to get people involved and testing out the concepts. There are tons of tools from communication platforms like Yammer to Basecamp to mind mapping software like MindMeister that can get others involved in the process without having to bend over backwards to give their input.

Once you have the conversation started, be sure to capitalize on the excitement and put your words into action. The best time to get active is when there is a spark about the project. Keep the good vibes and motivation going in order to blast off and start testing the idea, the product and the startup. In today’s economy, you can afford to get things to market quickly, test, test so more and then deal with the business end.

So, what’s your idea and how can we get you started? I’d love to help out in the comments.

This guest post was written by Greg Rollet, a Gen-Y Entrepreneur and Internet Marketer. His new course, the Rock Star Business Series, helps Gen-Y build their brand and their business with online tools and resources. You can also follow him on Twitter, @g_ro.

Photo by darek.zon

I have read many posts and heard alot of casts where people talk about quitting their day jobs or dropping off school to build their start-ups, that’s cool and all but make sure you take a minute or several minutes to rethink that decision. With the present state of the economy, I can see why anyone would give up on searching for a job and focus fully on their start-up. We’ve all read those fairytale stories of how Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard to found Facebook, how Tim Ferriss quit his corporate job to build a successful business etc… but we never read those stories about how Joe dropped out of college to build a start-up but ended up homeless and hungry. The world we live in glorifies those success stories but forget the failures, not realizing how important it could be in teaching young Entrepreneurs to make the right decision.

If you feel as a young Entrepreneur that you have enough money to last you through your entire start-up process, then by all means follow your heart. The thing people don’t realize is that the money is not the only element of gain about having a job while chasing a start-up dream. If you know that your current job consumes too much of your time and you need to have a less demanding schedule, here’s a thought: find a part time job, a consulting gig at a start-up and keep a cashflow rather than giving it up all together. I always encourage Entrepreneurs to try associating themselves with other start-ups. If you can get a job at a start-up, try your best to! It’s a learning process that will prove immensely valuable. If you can’t get a full-time job there, truth is that a lot of start-ups outsource some aspects of their jobs – cease this opportunity, be active on their blogs and community, study their moves and make sure you learn something. It will come in handy. Here are some reasons why having a job helps your pursuit of start-up success:

1.) It keeps the money coming in. There’s always money floating around silicon valley and Investors are always looking for promising Entrepreneurs to invest in, BUT they are now very very careful with how much they spend. It’s more difficult to get money from investors these days if you are a first time Entrepreneur and the state of the economy can be blamed for that. Most Entrepreneurs have now turned to bootstrapping as the way of funding their business. How can you afford to bootstrap if you don’t have cashflow? even if you have money saved up somewhere, do you know how long that will last before you need more?

2.) It offers the opportunity to gain some useful experience. If you have a job whether in a start-up or not, you are bound to learn a thing or two that would be useful later on in your career as an Entrepreneur. You might find yourself learning how to manage other people, how to make the right business decisions, marketing and so forth. The possibilities are many. Now imagine if you were working at a start-up, you will see first hand what it takes to build/run a start-up. You are bound to learn important lessons, lessons like how to pitch investors, how to find the right work force, effective marketing strategy, carrying out customer tests etc..

3.) Having a job means Networking Opportunities. A lot of people associate Networking with having time to travel from event to event. On the job networking might be over-looked but there are many stories of people building relationships with co-workers, bosses or even clients and have gone on to build successful businesses with the help of these people. I can’t count how many ex-google employees, ex-paypal employees that have gone on to build start-ups that are performing better than okay at the moment. These people took advatage of the people they met while working at their old jobs and the results are obvious. So if you are a recent grad, it helps to atleast try looking for a job, rather than just focus fully on starting up a business.

4.) Having a Job means something to fall back on. Whether you like to hear this or not, most start-ups fail within the first year. I know every Entrepreneur believe it can’t be them, we all expect to succeed! After all we are the optimists and those investors are pessimists. But what if you do fail? what then? Having a job means something you can fall back on in this tough recession period where it’s more difficult to find a new job than it is for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle.

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Every start-up shares the same primary objective: Get lots of people to join my service/use my product. It’s always the same regardless of what industry you are in and the Entrepreneurs with the best networking skills are the ones who have the best ride. Networking is all about finding people who could be of help to you and reaching out to them. It’s really an art and if done early and effectively, your start-up might actually have a chance. Research shows that 80% of startups fail and shut shop within their first 6-12 months, as a new Entrepreneur you must find like minded people to interact with and learn from so your startup can perhaps be in that 20% that survives.

Networking for your start-up requires you as an Entrepreneur to be confident, vocal and able to relate with people. It’s about being able to convince people that you are good at what you do, that what you do is great and they should be interested in what you have to offer. Picking who to network with is a whole different subject and that depends on you and your business, but it’s important that you start networking early on and do it right. It raises awareness for your venture, it helps you build up a potential customer base, mentors and even potential investors.

Here are some idea on how you can network early and effectively

1.) Set up a temporary welcome page on the internet while building. Here’s an idea that alot of start-up have employed recently and it works like a charm. Instead on being offline and completely behind the scenes while building your start-up, how about letting people know about you during this time? how about giving people the gist behind your business and getting them excited about it? The trick is to set up your domain name, put up a page that welcomes people, tell them what you are building, when you will go live and offer an opt-in e-mailing list if they want to be updated with news about the startup. It will surprise you how many people sign-up, boosting your potential customer pool even before you launch.

2.) Go to the After parties of events you can’t afford. I watched a recent presentation by Kevin Rose at the FOWA ‘09 in London and this was one of the points he made that I could totally relate to. Kevin is a guy I completely respect, he’s very daring, does things people consider against the norm and it always works out for him. For those who don’t know him, Kevin is founder of Digg and wefollow. Like me, many young entrepreneur know that we should be interacting with the likes of Chris Sacca, Ashton Kutcher, Dave McClure, Ron Conway etc… but the only way we could get to reach and pitch these people is at start-up events or investor conferences. The problem is though, it could cost up to $5,000 to get in. Step up After party. They are cheaper, easier to get in (you can volunteer to help on the night) and are more relaxed. Just remember to have a demo of your startup handy. Visuals work better than words, ask Aaron Patzer.  After spending several hours per day for 6 months building Mint.com, he embarked on a networking campaign. He got turned down by virtually everyone until he pitched a partner at First Round Capital outside a Networking event in 2006.  “I had a server running on a laptop in the trunk of my car,” Patzer says. “He waited a couple of minutes. I ran out and got the laptop and fired up a demo.” The rest is history.

3.) Exploit the Social Media channels. With Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and other social networks available these days, it’s easy to build a brand and build a following for it. Find people who can help you realize your start-up dreams and start connecting with them. Share information about your business, tell the world what’s new and what’s going on in your community. Follow/friend/interact with VCs, potential mentors, other entrepreneurs or anyone who indicates interest in your niche. In time, you will have a substantial network of people for your start-up. The means when you launch, you will lauch with lots of users versus no one if you are quiet during your building period.

4.) Foster relationships with Journalists and Media. Take the opportunity to build relationships with people that can put your start-up in the public eye. A lot of journalists and press people have blogs these days, are on twitter and it doesn’t harm to leave a comment here, retweet there and interact all over. By building a relationship with them you are improving your chances of getting a positive response when you ask for a favor. Take advantage of whatever you get; if you don’t shoot, you will not score.

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This is a post I have been working on for quite a few weeks now and only just concluded that it’s got enough information and ready to be shared. Each day I stumble on myriads of blog posts about how to succeed in business or how start-ups succeed, I rarely see people talking about failure in start-ups and how to avoid it. Failure is hard, it is exceeding difficult to bare. However, it is also a state we all find ourselves in at some stage in our lives. If you ever find yourself in this state, just make sure you learn from the experience and use it to better yourself.

“A failure is a man who has blundered but is not capable of cashing in on the experience” – Elbert Hubbard

A start-up is like any other endeavor in life, you either succeed or you fail. I have seen and read several stories recently about failed companies and all that has inspired me to put together the most popular reasons why startups fail.

When one builds a start-up, it is (usually) because the person has found a hole in the market. He has found that the market demands a certain product that is either not yet available or is available but in a way that doesn’t completely satisfy the people. I have found that most start-ups that failed to get off the ground did so for practicing the opposite of this. This culminates in my first point.

Supplying what wasn’t demanded.

I find that majority of start-ups that never failed to cut it ignored the number one principle for whatever reason. People only pay for what they want. Many entrepreneurs believe they can come in and “create a niche” out of nothing or spark demand by putting a product out there. There are certainly times when this will work but most times it doesn’t. You will end up investing money and time into creating this product that doesn’t appeal to people hence killing your business.

When Apple came up with iPods, it was because people needed a way of carrying music around easily. Music was already there, and people wanted a way to have their music with them when they are outdoors, indoors and on the move. The existing means were chunky and unattractive. See that was the demand and Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. was kind enough to order John Rubinstein to build us one.

Having a bad team at the helm.

I once heard at a start-up convention that it was a terrible idea for one person to start a company by himself. The speaker went on to say it was a huge red flag and can be interpreted as saying the founder couldn’t convince anyone to partner up with him maybe because the idea was garbage or the founder has a questionable personality. I agree to an extent that it is always good to have partners. That way there will be people you can share ideas with, brainstorm if you are not so sure about a next move, lift you up when the blues are catching up with you and so forth. But I don’t necessarily agree that it could mean failure for you. What I do think will bring failure is having the wrong people building and running the start-up. It could be one person or 10 people, but if they are not right for the task for whatever reason, you will run into problems.

Sacrificing Value for Profit.

The purpose of building a start-up is to make profit. People might beat around the bush and say oh, I wanted to create something people really needed and make life easier for us all, not so much for the money. I don’t like when people say that. Yes maybe you did want to make life easier for everyone but you decided to patent and market it because you wanted to make money off this “help” you are giving people.

Regardless of how much you itch for profit, make sure you don’t maximize it at the expense of the long term value. You want your customers to believe in you to give them the best value for their dollar. It’s not too farfetched that there are entrepreneurs who use cheaper raw material to build a product because it increases their profit but in so doing sacrificed the quality of the product and the trust of their customers. Eventually they will realize that someone out there makes the same product with better value for the same cost, and they will stop patronizing you. So, advice:  don’t jeopardize long term value for immediate profit. It will kill your start-up

Poor Funding.

This is a popular one. Many times I close my eyes and just imagine how many great ideas are still only ideas or prototypes because the founders cannot secure enough cash to make a full functioning product. There must be loads of them. It is important that Entrepreneurs do extensive research into the several methods of getting early investments before they start building. When you have limited budget, it could lead to a limited product. It could lead to the entrepreneur cutting back on a number of features or parts of the start-up that are critical to its survival. There are several ways to go about seeking funds for a start-up but keep in mind that it takes a great product, a great team and a great bit of luck to actually get the right amount of funding.

Unfavorable Location.

When Y combinator was built, they did so with the idea of putting founders in a place that will favor their growth and keep them away from distractions. When building a start-up it’s a good idea to be in a place where the market for your product is highest and where the industry has its best players in. Why do you think silicon valley is home to most web startups in America? It’s because the gurus are there, that’s where investors, experts who know the A-Z of the web startup industry move themselves to. They want to be around likeminded people who will keep inspiring them.

Bad Marketing.

If you build the world’s greatest product and no one knows about it, then you will fail. Marketing is absolutely critical to the success of a start-up and no wonder most start-ups spend a huge chuck of their funds on spreading the word. Someone once told me that “if you build a great product, people will come”. I completely disagree. They might come but like 10years later and you will probably have failed 9 years before that anyway. Key to a successful startup is the marketing plan. You must know which target market will purchase your product and come up with a brilliant way of getting the word across to them. If you don’t, chances are that ‘It’s a wrap’!

There are certainly several other reasons why start-ups fail, here are just the most popular ones I have noticed and wanted to share. If you do know any others, kindly share with the rest of us.

So now your business is up and running on the internet, you have gone live, there are no bugs and you are ready for the money to start rolling in so you can pay off those loans, investments and so forth. You are now faced with selling yourself so that people know about your services. I have been asked this question a lot and so I decided to cover it on here. I had given a speech at a small gathering of hopeful entrepreneurs about 2 months ago and atleast 6 people came up to me at different times after the events and asked the same question. “I have developed and designed my website, everything is in place and ready to go, I just have one little problem…how do I get people to know about it?”

First of all I must clarify something before I proceed. For new entrepreneurs, this is very important so listen up, getting people to know about your business is NOT a little problem. It infact is the most difficult and important part of your startup as far as I know. It is difficult in the sense that it requires hours upon hours of research and work to promote your services. It sometimes will require you spending money and it could get very frustrating when you see your efforts not being fruitful (this is typically the case at the beginning for most startups). It is also the most important part of your startup because you must carefully seek and find your customer base and these are the people you want to market to. Marketing to people who don’t care about or need what you are offering will just be a waste of time and effort. As a new entrepreneur you have tones of stuff you need to spend your time, money and effort on anyway, and wasting that on anything that will be futile and can shatter you.

From the experience I have gathered over the few years I have been involved in startups, I have seen a few strategies that have worked, some for me and others for friends/colleagues of mine…here we go.

Close your eyes, then read the name to yourself: Imagine you were a customer or just another web surfer and you came across the name of your company, can you tell the purpose of the company or not? This is an important aspect of starting a company. The first time I tried my hands on building a social network, I experienced the pain of not having a name that related to my business. I had come across cool sites like xoom, joost, twitter e.t.c. and thought those names were notoriously catchy so I indulged. I realized that I hadn’t got the money or track record like these startups to market my company and so all I could do was SEO and use other free marketing mechanisms. I learned that it is very helpful to have keywords you want to optimize for your website placed in the title and name because the search robots like this. Optimization was really slow for me because of this, coupled with my lack of experience with startups at the time. This doesn’t just apply to online businesses either. If I was walking down a road looking for a store I could buy some ‘sick’ sneakers and on my left I see a store called “besnizzled” and on my right I see “house of sneakers”, I will obviously go into the store on my right even though I have never heard of either store before. The fact that their product is in their business name catches my attention …regardless of if “besnizzled” had the best sneakers in the world. In a nut shell, it’s easier if your business name tells people what you do right off the bat.

Is your online presence strong enough?: You must put your business in a position where people feel comfortable patronizing or even window shop with you. The first thing is to make sure your website is not garbage. Your website doesn’t have to be the best designed or most expensive one in the industry but it has to be appealing, it has to be attractive enough to make people want to stay, tell others about it and come back themselves. Make your users able to subscribe to your emails and services, try giving gifts that will be attractive to your customers/fan base e.t.c.

It is also important that you build a community on the web. Exchange links and banners with more patronized websites in your niche. I know most times you will get turned down by a lot of these people but keep trying and ask a lot of sites. I remember I asked collegehumor when I started my college forum site and ofcourse they said no. So don’t take those things personally, just keep asking and you will find atleast one or two. They might not be terribly popular sites, but atleast they have a better google rank and position than you. The more you link, the more attractive your website is to search engine crawlers.

Spread the word: Perhaps the most powerful tool for marketing. I find that a lot of people neglect this tool, advancement in technology has made everyone want to type rather than speak. Most young entrepreneurs will rather spend money of google adwords, affiliate marketing and so forth than actually telling people about what they do in person. I am not saying adwords or affiliate marketing don’t work because they do and they do quite well actually. I am just saying in my position when I started out I didn’t have the money for that so I don’t believe it is the only/best way to go about it. Go around, tell your friends and family about it, and let them tell their friends and so on.

Make flyers, business cards, banners and place them strategic locations where your customer base visit. I once went to a club and I swear I snuck behind the bar and placed a banner with my funny tee-shirt designs right next to the Budweiser banner. It was there all night! All I am saying is, you don’t have to get as crazy as I was but make yourself popular in places where your prospective customer base always patronize.

Be prominent on Social Media sites: If you have a twitter, facebook, stumbleupon, linkedIn, digg account, you are on your way. These are some of the most powerful marketing tools in their own right. Make a lot of friends on these sites, use the power of status of facebook, twit your website name to your followers, share your website and business with all your friends on stumbleupon/digg and have them share with their other friends. Trust me this works tremendously, if done right.

Here is what’s important though, I have learned that it is never helpful if all you do on these social media is submitting your own site. Feel free to always share them with your friends but when you start submitting your site all the time, you start depleting in value, people see you as a parasite, using them for your own benefit. Instead, submit other people’s site in your niche. If your business/site is about photography, submit and stumble or digg other webpages and businesses in this category. Subscribe to them, review them and usually they will return the favor. When they see that you reviewed and submitted their stuff, they are grateful and usually will show their gratitude by doing the same for you. Don’t get too desperate or in a rush to see traffic, it takes time and submitting yourself to achieve this never ever works!

Use Blogs and forums: You do not have to create your own blog or forums even though the former is usually advisable. However bookmark blogs and forums in your niche, visit them regularly and make reviews, comment and make friends there. In time they will get comfortable with you and patronize you. If you are leaving a comment on a forum, you can have your webpage as your signature…it will be seen by everyone anytime you leave a comment. This process is not an immediate source of customers, it takes time. But don’t give up…if you are so quick to give up, then you must re-evaluate whether you are really able to be an entrepreneur.

Track your traffic/customer source: Find out which marketing outlet is bringing you not the most but the ‘real’ customers. Customers that actually hang around and come back regularly. These are the ones you need to focus on anyways, not those who visit for 5secounds and disappear, or those who shoot your bounce rate to the moon. If you are an online business, utilize the google analytics package…it is amazingly useful. If you are an offline business, you can utilize a feedback form. Ask your customers how they like your services and somewhere before your “thank you for patronizing us”, sneak in the “how did you hear about us?” line. Always works.

]]> http://genystartup.com/uncategorized/marketing-your-new-startup/feed/ 1 http://genystartup.com/uncategorized/new-entrepreneurs-and-the-recession/ http://genystartup.com/uncategorized/new-entrepreneurs-and-the-recession/#comments Tue, 19 May 2009 20:01:21 +0000 Admin http://genystartup.com/?p=78

Believe it or not young entrepreneurs seeking funds are the ones that will feel the effect of the economic downturn the most. With money more difficult to come by these days, even filthy rich investors and VCs know the value of every quarter. They are all being more tight fisted and more careful about who gets their money. Don’t get me wrong there’s still money swimming around Silicon Valley in large quantities. Infact so far in 2009, well over $5billion has invested in several companies in various stages of funding. That is a whole lot of money, however the focus of VCs and angels these past few months had been on companies like twitter, olx e.t.c. companies already in existence and well established. They are quite confident that these companies will bring returns and that’s what every investor seeks at the moment.

One can also look to the several local funds and loans set up by government agencies and private consortium  set up for the sole purpose of helping new companies grow.

I have been talking to a lot of people, reading a lot of books and articles on what new entrepreneurs can do to secure some funding as well and here’s a few things I found:

1.) Build a confident and relentless team. In previous posts I had talked about the importance of having a team rather than go solo. For some reason you are more “attractive” to angels and investors if you have a team in place compared to you being alone. It’s an unspoken rule in silicon valley that the more people who find the idea and venture worthwhile (regardless of if they are part of the project or just admirers), the more worthy the venture is likely to be.

Once you have a team in place, you have to ensure that confidence is instilled in each and every member of that team about the quality of the product you intend to deliver. If the confidence is there, trust me, it shows whenever you talk about your venture and this is always a good quality. Now you’ve also got to make sure you and your team are relentless. Never give up or take no for an answer. I know of an entrepreneur who currently builds gaming platforms on Facebook that required some funding to bring his ideas to life. He spoke to several angel networks and VCs and all he got was no. Did he give up? Did he look for something else to do? No…he and his team pressed on, they sent “thank you for reading through our resume and business plan” letters to all the people that said no, and 3 days later they resent the plans to these people. They kept at this routine 4 times until a Boston based angel had enough and decided to meet with them. 5 minutes into their meeting the “young, hip and game geek” angel was sold and invested several millions in their venture. Now they rake in well over $10million in revenue from the entire social network clientele.

Never give up! You and your team MUST keep at it.

2.) Are you in a business that doesn’t respect the recession? Certain industries thrive and boom whether it’s the recession or not. Technology, science, biotech are only a few examples of sectors that are not really affected by the recession.

3.) Build and use your contacts. I once had the opportunity to sit in on a startup 2 startup conference in California early in May 2009 and a veteran investor was speaking on what he looked for in an entrepreneur. He went on and on, but what really concerned me is if he was interested in investing in a freshie or not. I knew the answer even before he took the microphone so it was no surprise when he said it. I don’t know if he planned on saying it or not but as he went on in his speech he said “the chance of me investing in a new entrepreneur is zero and that is the case with every other investor I know”. He went on to say he only invested based on referrals. This is not news to anyone except new entrepreneurs obviously and that’s the point of this blog.

As much as I will like to say otherwise, your chance as a new entrepreneur to secure funds is pretty much non –existent if you don’t have that inside connection. Build your connections now!