Larry Chiang’s book, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School“, has an entire chapter devoted to “Networking with Venture Capitalists” #Ch4. Getting undergrad founders to self fund is easier after all college students get a “FICO” credit score over 740. After a Harvard Law School keynote, Harvard Business wrote: “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School”
NY Fashion Week has supermodels getting a high FICO credit score because I supermodel on-the-side |
By Larry Chiang
As an undergrad, I learned that when networking for a mentor, it sometimes sounds like they’re joking. I wrote, “How to Network with a VC You Don’t Know To Get Them To Mentor You“
They. Aren’t. Joking.
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
These slew of mentors all sounded like they’re joking.
Let’s examine why older, alpha-status mentors joke with us undergrad computer science majors:
/1/ Older mentors wanna see how hungry we are.
Alphas meet a lot of people that “talk”. They want to see and meet people that “do”. So, for example, alpha-status mentors will “test balloon” us by saying, “Yeah, my wife’s been telling me to get Illinois people into my LightSpeed summer incubator. So yeahh, I’ll take u guys”
See my eBootcamp notes 2010. An alpha-status VC named John doled out $50k from the stage!
It kinda reveals what my mentee Chris knows:
/2/ Take that jokingly made offer that the alpha-status mentor made…. and solidify it
So, me and a future cs major (let’s call him nephew CHRIS) did a verbal deal.
YOU MUST CONFIRM THE VERBAL DEAL.
Alpha-status people like
– voicemail
– federal express packages
– us postal (for a thank you card)
– alpha status fossils use EMAIL
/3/ Networking with Alpha Males involves recognizing alpha males really just want entertainment.
My networking mentor Steven Schiffman, Susan Roanne and Susan Page mentored me to “Be a vacation”. It dovetails the fact that alpha-status people l entertainment via laughs and giggles. Alpha males like seeing people accelerate through inflection points. Inflection points are career highlights for us young undergrads.
-4- Two jokers
/5/ another example of “joking”
Bob Metcalfe said to my friend ‘Michelle’, “I can’t stop you” Re taking CS 178 (fall seminar) by just showing up to class.
/6/ another recent example of joking:
Bob Metcalfe said, “You should teach a class on crashing.”
So I blogged a speculative lecture. It’s on my Twittr. Professor Metcalfe retweeted it
/7/ valuable offers need to followed up within 24 hours.
Seriously.
Very few follow up. So, when they joking hand you a lottery ticket (that looks like their business card!), you execute an email
/8/ Jokingly at a SWIB dinner, Tom Kosnik said “You should teach my class with me”
Then I followed up in a process that I’ll detail in a separate article. But, it started with a joke offer that I locked in with an email inside of 36 hrs (Tom requested Monday morning email. The Evvia conversation was Saturday night)
/9/ Alpha-status people are testing to see if we listen, take notes and then “DO”
Few do. Many talk. Few execute.
10/ alpha males don’t need the money. They don’t need a cut from helping us undergrads. Their solo benefit is entertainment.
Look at the list of people:
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Larry Chiang (@LarryChiang) |
They’re legendary and their career legacy’s are set. Perhaps they’ll risk their time by helping you, but they’ve been at the networking & mentorship game a verrrry long time. Most mentees don’t pan out. In staying with the 49er gold panning analogy, I hope I’ve shown how you as undergrads can network for a mentor
See how many mentors I mention in my two legendary ENGR 145 videos. They move you to the right on the entrepreneur bell curve
At Stanford, I pay attention to people who listen well, mention mentors and parlay their mentors’ brain into PAC-12 honors
Admittedly, this article has been male focused. I did do a stint as “gender reversal entrepreneurship exercises”
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Founder of “What They Don’t Teach at Business School”, Larry Chiang with Ron Conway: https://ireport.cnn.com/people/larrychiang
Author, NY Times Bestseller
“What They Will NEVER Teach You at Stanford Business School about EUTWMPPM @SXSW” came out 11-11-14
Emergency swings and cutting deals as an 9 year old
-11- Interrogational.
Alpha status mentors are interrogating us with jokes. Their sense of humor is the result of their being steps ahead of us.
Albert Einstein said, “Sorry I didn’t have enough time to simplify it.” I say, “Sorry we as alpha males didn’t have time to add humor to it”.
Well, Albert, I’m an alpha and I did have time to make entrepreneurship hiLarryAss
I take selfie, no selfs to knowledge activate what Founders Fund VCs do: They “non employee co-founded” Palintir, PowerSet and a dozen other startups
#SelfieNoSelf
/12/ What’s the Deal with Larry Chiang
See how some take to the Internet when networking fails. After a few thousand attempts to network, alpha males get jaded. Humor is our buffer.
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