I recently gave a talk to the Canadian Tech Accelerator on how to find decision makers and get meetings as a startup with limited connections. The Canadian Consulate of New York brings a few select young companies to NYC every 3 months to expose them to the New York Tech ecosystem while they grow their business. [...]
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Using The Proof Approach to Land A Startup Job
I get a lot of emails asking how to land a startup job as a non-technical person. I want highlight one technique I call the “Proof Approach” that I’ve seen work time and time again. When you have no prior startup experience, employers are taking a risk on you. They use your previous accomplishments and [...]
One Resource I Use to Get Results Faster
I’ve donated more money to the driving range than I’d like to admit. You see, growing up I was told in order to improve or perform something at a high level, the best thing to do was practice. In the context of aspiring to break triple digits on the links, I thought hitting the range and [...]
An Interview With Alex Banayan: The Guy’s Got Hustle
Today I bring you an interview with my buddy Alex Banayan, a 20-year old VC and author for Crown Publishing (Random House). In this interview Alex reveals: How we landed a VC job at 19 with Alsop Louie Partners and leveraged the power of authenticity to do it. The advice that the President of Microsoft [...]
A Chat With Dan Shipper: His New Startup and Relationship Building with Top Entrepreneurs
In the second edition of my new interview series, I have a chat with Dan Shipper. Dan is a co-founder of Firefly and has made a few waves in the tech scene. In this conversation Dan reveals: The details of his new startup Firefly and where he got the idea Why he decided to shelve his last [...]
How to Leverage Partners You Don’t Have Yet
I recently had an interesting business development conversation with a founder that I thought others might find interesting. His company is just about to finalize a deal with their first marquee partner. He was wondering at what point he should start using their name in conversations with other prospects. The social proof of another [...]
Things Startup Founders Should Understand About Channel Partnerships
Many startup founders are deathly afraid of building their own sales team. They default to channel partnerships to try and get distribution. Sigh. For those unfamiliar with the term, a channel partnership is when a person or organization sells products on behalf of another company. An example of this is how Duda Mobile [...]
Guerilla Tactics: How to Find A Decision Maker Part 2
In the first part of this post, I shared how calling for a former employee can help you find a decision maker. Here’s a few other strategies to isolate the right contact at a large company. Use Implicit Data on LinkedIn Let’s revert back to the conundrum of there being 12 people in the marketing [...]
One Mistake that Can Crush (BD) Pipeline Dreams
Prior to SinglePlatform, one of my biggest business development mistakes was failing to include a measure within my hitlist that allowed me to prioritize opportunities. For those foreign to the concept, a hitlist (or pipeline) comprises of all of the companies that you could potentially partner with, sell to etc. It’s essentially a list of [...]
How to Cold Email Prospects
I’ve written hundreds of cold emails over the past year and come to a few conclusions about how to elicit a positive response. I’ve also received a few myself and consistently see people use strategies that just haven’t worked for me. Here’s my two cents on how to cold email prospects effectively. Do: Keep it [...]
Building A Minimum Viable Audience
I’ve soft-launched two startups in the past year…and I’m the only one that knows about it. Many aspiring founders build a minimum viable product without a minimum viable audience. This is bad. In order to truly understand market demand, there needs to be a feedback loop. For consumer web products, that feedback loop is [...]
One Approach To Land Your Dream Job
Stop Applying to Startups. This was the title of an excellent post by Quinten Farmer on the challenges of landing a startup job through the traditional application process. The bottom line is it’s very challenging to stand out amongst a barrage of resumes if you don’t already have a connection to a company or taken [...]
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