Last night Brad Feld presented some ideas from his book Startup Communities at NJ Tech Meetup. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how awesome it was to see one of the most prominent venture capitalists at Stevens Institute of Technology (my alma mater), but I wanted to write a reaction to one of Brad’s answers to an audience question.
One of the attendees asked Brad, “In the NJ startup community there are a lot of service providers that attend the events, how can they provide value to the community?”
Brad’s answered, “You have to give before you get.” He explained in his own experiences he would give advice and mentorship without any expectation of a return. In the process not only would Brad improve the community by helping others, but also occasionally there would be some return on the help he gave.
It was a very aha moment for the audience, and I saw some tweets and comments in the Meetup group about that quote. It came as a surprise to me that the audience found this to be so profound because it’s a variation on widely known religious principles. In Christianity the idea is represented by the quote “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, and in Eastern religions it’s called karma.
Since there seemed to be such a positive reaction to that quote I wanted to share one startup experience where I received, and one startup experience where I gave.
Getting
I had taken a meeting with Chris DeMayo, an accountant from Withum, Smith, & Brown, followed up via e-mail, and received an engagement letter for the services we discussed. I wasn’t in any rush to sign the engagement letter, and I ignored it for about a month. When we started seeking a new round of financing I e-mailed our executive summary to all of our mentors, advisors, and service providers, and asked them to send it to any investors that might be interested.
Chris e-mailed me back right away, and told me he would send it out to a few investment firms he knows that are interested in the space. Within a day or two he had me on an e-mail introduction with the CFO of a top NYC seed-stage investment company, and we set up a meeting to demo echo. I signed the engagement letter the same day.
Giving
I got an e-mail on a Saturday from Samir Ajmera, the head of the NYU Poly DUMBO Incubator (where we work), asking me to broker an introduction between a bar owner I developed a relationship with and another entrepreneur from the incubator, Brian Shimmerlik.
Brian was seeking to pilot his company Vengo’s vending machines at bars, and I could easily put him in touch with a decision maker at Fun Bars (an organization that runs six or seven bars in NYC). I had never met Brian but we spoke briefly on the phone, and I made the warm introduction to the owner afterward.
A few months later I saw Vengo was featured in TechCrunch around a $1 million round of funding from top investors (among them Brad Feld), and the partnership between Vengo and the owner of FunBars. I was thrilled that I could play some small part to help Brian, and we finally got to meet in person over lunch yesterday afternoon.
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An important aspect of the “give before you get” philosophy is that you have no expectation for returns on what you gave. In my experience with Chris from WS+B the cycle of giving and receiving was somewhat instantaneous, but he never asked me to sign the engagement letter before sending out our executive summary. In contrast I was able to help Brian from Vengo develop a business relationship, I don’t know that he will ever be able to do the same for me, but more importantly I don’t expect him to do the same for me.
I think it’s important to realize that “give before you get” is a concept that transcends startup communities, and ideally would be applied to your every day life. I’m always looking for ways to give. Whether that means helping a Facebook friend get a job, volunteering my technical skills at an arts organization, or facilitating a business relationship is really unimportant. What is important is that I don’t expect to see any personal gain in return.