A few lessons from this program
Go where they are – To get hooked into the web startup community, Peter went to tech events. He met his co-founder at the very first event he went to, the TechCrunch party in Michael Arrington’s house.
Once isn’t enough – Even the shiest networker can start building contacts by consistenly going to similar events. People start to recognize you and relationships naturally develop.
Everyone knows the host – After going as a guest to a few events, Peter switched roles and started hosting his own dinners. When you’re a guest, you get to meet a few people at an event, but the host gets to know everyone.
Tap their lists – To broaden his guest list, he co-hosted his dinners with two other connections: Mike Jones, CEO of userplane and Keith Richman, CEO of Break.com
Watch it grow – Word started to spread about his small dinners and people started asking for invitations. So Peter and his co-hosts created bigger events. The most recent one had over 150 guests. There’s even a web site, now betasouth.org. It’s a “.org” because the goal to make connections, not profits.
What are your networking tips? Add them to the comments.