I’ve been spending a day or two a week over at the TechStars Boston office, and so far it’s been a ton of fun. I think that the TechStars teams are building some potentially very cool applications attacking real markets. After having interacted with a number of the teams, I’ve decided to post my ideas on how they can get even more out of the program. Keep in mind that these tips, plus $3.50, will get you a coffee at Starbucks. (In other words they might not be worth that much! And they are in no particular order.)
Tips for the TechStars Boston people:
- LinkedIn is your friend, and if you’re smart you’ll be LinkedIn buddies with every single mentor you meet. This way, if you need to try to reach someone in a particular industry/field/company you’ll be able to see into the mentors’ networks. Remember that you can search in your nearby networks for specific companies or job titles/descriptions. I’m willing to bet that many of the mentors will be happy to make intro’s to people in their network, and LinkedIn will give you the ability to know who knows who where.
- Carry your business cards, because I get the feeling there will be very interesting/relevant people wandering around the halls here in Cambridge over the next few weeks - even if you don’t have a real chat with someone you will probably want to get their contact info, and giving them your card is an easy to get them to reciprocate with theirs. Of course, I like the sexy little Moo cards, but as the Baydin and Localytics guys have pointed out, I’m a bit of a walking Atlas portfolio company advertisement.
- Start promoting yourself on Twitter. I’ll follow you on Twitter, and I’m sure many of the other mentors and TechStars entrepreneurs will. You’ll probably find that members of the local and tech media will want to follow you too because of your association with the program.
- I want to hear your pitch. Hit me with it as often as you can! Since the pitches keep changing I want to keep up to date on your thoughts.
- Be aggressive in asking the mentors if they want to get your weekly progress update emails. These updates make people feel like they have a stake in what you are doing.
- Bother Shawn a lot. Try to get intros out of him, even to people who aren’t mentors. Need an expert in a particular field? See if he can help, or at least point you to a mentor who may have a contact or two.
- Start thinking about your funding needs. I may be bringing this up before the TechStars organizers want me to, but the program will be over before you know it. How are you going to continue to fund the business?
- Do you want to hire any of the mentors? (Ok, this is the most controversial thing I’m going to say.) Some of these mentors are real tech-community rockstars. Some of them are legit leaders. Some of them may bring loads of venture capital to any company that they join. Do you think that you could get any of them as the CEO of your company? Or as a head of marketing, engineering or something? If your team has holes and you think one or more of the mentors would be the ideal person to fill them, start gently courting them now. Coffee chats, email updates, asking for intros to people in their network who you can impress and learn from - carefully get this moving.
Good luck to all the awesome entrepreneurs at TechStars this year!
