Spring is near! 

Below is a list of many upcoming entrepreneurial programs and events you won’t want to miss!  A lot of great events are coming up during Penn State’s Startup week, April  4th - 8th!  Reach out to LaunchBox to schedule a brainstorming session if you want to learn more about LaunchBox or discuss your ideas! 

Calendar  of Events:

March 31: Grow with Google: Get Your Local Business on Google Search and Maps

April  4 - April 8:  PSU Startup Week schedule of events

April 6 The fifth Annual LION Tank™ , Application closed March 13

April  9:  Inc. U Competition The Investment, a WPSU Shark Tank-like television production.

April 12: Preparing a Small Business Plan and Financial Projections 5:00 - 6:30pm

April 19:  SCORE: Are You Ready to be an Entrepreneur?

April 21:  Grow with Google: Use YouTube to Grow Your Business

April 28 & 29: Venture Connection Invent Penn State's Venture & IP Conference

May 11: Grow with Google:  Learn the Basics of Google Ads

June 7:  Grow with Google: Sell Online with E-Commerce Tools

June 15: Business Bootcamp - Information -Application is coming soon!

June 28: Grow with Google: Make Better Business Decisions with Analytics 

July: FastTrack Accelerator - Application is coming soon!

Wednesdays: 1 Million Cups Lehigh Valley - Every Wednesday at 9 AM on Zoom and at NCC

PSU Startup Week Schedule For Students and the Community:

April 4: Why is Good Information So Hard to Find? Tips and Tricks for Researching StartUps 

April 4: Startup: Food-preneurs (Presented in Spanish only)  

April 5: Startup: Sports (Presented in Spanish only) 

April 5: Entrepreneurship Speaker Series - Roles of Intrapreneurs in Our Economy 

April 5: Aspiring Student Entrepreneurs - Panel of Student Entrepreneurs for Aspiring Student Entrepreneurs

April 5: The First Steps to Small Business Success 

April 5: Real Estate Investment, a Young Entrepreneurs Journey 

April 5: Feasibility, Structure, Licensing and Resignation 

April 5: Pandemic Pivot: Innovation in Business During COVID-19 

April 6: Intellectual Property 101 

April 6: The Great Resignation and the Power of Entrepreneurship: A Panel Discussion 

April 6: Common Legal Issues with Startups 

April 6: Al Entrepreneurship Fireside Chat 

April 6: Why is Customer Discovery Important for Startups 

April 7: Lion's Den Final Pitch Competition 

April 7: Startup: Inventors (Presented in Spanish only)

Additional Resources in the Lehigh Valley:

• Small Business Development Center (SBDC) - https://sbdc.lehigh.edu  

• SCORE Lehigh Valley: https://lehighvalley.score.org

• Calendar:  https://lehighvalley.launchbox.psu.edu/calendar

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lvlaunchbox/ 

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lehigh-valley-launchbox/

The process before, during and after the meeting:

1. If you haven’t yet, choose a focused, findable segment

   • Within this group, which type of this person would want it most?

   • Would everyone within this group buy/use it, or only some of them?

   • Why do they want it? (e.g. What is their problem or goal)

   • Does everyone in the group have that motivation or only some of them?

   • What additional motivations are there?

   • Which other types of people have these motivations?

Within that sub-group, who wants it most? Next we’re going to look at our groups’ behaviours and figure out where to find them. 

• What are these people already doing to achieve their goal or survive their problem?

• Where can we find our demographic groups?

• Where can we find people doing the above workaround behaviours?

• Are any of these groups un-findable? If so, go back up the list and slice them into finer pieces until you know where to find them. A customer segment isn’t very useful if there’s no way you can get in touch!

Now that we have a bunch of who-where pairs, we can decide who to start with based on who seems most:

1. Profitable

2. Easy to reach

3. Rewarding for us to build a business around

(Looking for segments) For example, if we were thinking about building an app to help students become more confident speakers, we might decide the best-case-students are graduating students nervous about their first big job interview. They are motivated not to screw up their big day. Other folks with those motivations might be first-time TV/radio guests, someone giving a wedding speech, or new authors who are about to go on book tour. Additional motivations (beyond coping with nervousness about a particular event) might be to improve at a valuable long-term skill or to fix some of the quirks of being a non-native speaker. That gives us some additional demographics, such as young professionals who have to talk a lot, such as teachers and salespeople. Or foreign exchange students who are about to graduate. Or non-native speaking PhD students who have an upcoming conference talk.

As we get specific, it becomes easier to imagine where to find these groups. Instead of the generic “students” (I guess I’ll walk around campus?), we can easily find non-native speaking PhD students through the admissions office or the department advisors. We know exactly who to look for and won’t waste our time talking to a bunch of irrelevant folks. Or we can find people online. We might reach new authors by searching Amazon’s upcoming release list and then reaching out to them on Twitter.

Now that we’ve got some focused demographics, we also want to look at existing behaviours. A lot of people are terrified of speaking and just ignore it. They probably aren’t going to be our customer. (The key is: Are these people actively looking for solutions?) Others talk to a therapist about their anxiety in general, while others try to improve speaking in particular by googling for tips, reading books, or going to workshops and meetups like Toastmasters. There are more existing solutions (e.g. new salespeople might get on-the-job training), but you get the idea. Once we know a group’s existing behaviours, it’s incredibly easy to get in touch with them. Nervous wedding speakers might be Googling for examples of great wedding speeches. 

(Marketing Tip#1) We could advertise on those search terms and offer a bit of re-assurance and support in exchange for a quick chat. (We can offer a FREE STEM Club as a FB Ad on Cookie Art, if people sign up, we can offer Cookie code. pdf in exchange for a customer interview? Or have them do a small survey in exchange for a PDF with 5 cookie code snippets) 

(Marketing Tip #2) If someone is listening to a podcast about speaking skills, we could sponsor it or propose to the host that they run a “call in to talk about your speaking fears and solutions” live event. 

(Marketing Tip #3) If this was my business, I would probably shift my preferred customer segment from “students” to “people scared of public speaking who are trying to get better.” I would start by going to a Toastmasters meetup since I could have a dozen conversations over the course of the evening by Keeping it Casual. That one evening would give me a great starting point for understanding the motivations, worldview, and needs of a large group of totally ideal customers who are already spending time and money to try to get better. (A STEM Club?) On the other hand, if you were attacking the same vision and happened to be a secret bibliophile, you might choose to start by tracking down some authors who are about to go on book tour.

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• Homeschooling Parents and children K-5, 

• K-5 CLUBs for Afterschool - Homeschool and school, 

• Parents with school going children K-5, 

• STEM Teachers K-5, 

• K-5 School going children who enjoy challenges, 

• K-5 Children Library Programs

2. With your team, decide your big 3 learning goals

What assumptions do you have that, if proven wrong, would cause this business to fail? 

1. STEM education in K-5 has a mass market.

2.Computational thinking is the foundation of STEM learning. It is not taught as a meta cognition skill that can be used repeatedly by children to look at problems around them. 

3. STEM is taught in SILOs. An integrated STEM curriculum will improve engagement in STEM and make children life long learners, but is not readily available.

4. Children learn difficult concepts much easier through the emotional connection of stories.

5. Parents don’t feel confident to teach STEM but are willing to work with their students when they are provided with structured material.

6. Students learn using multimedia formats. Videos, printable worksheets, books

(Validate on questions on the Fishbone Diagram)

Parents /Educators 

2. • 1. Do you teach STEAM in K-5? 

     2. Do you use story telling to teach STEAM? 

     3. What are some favorite STEAM topics you have taught this year? 

     4. How do you come up with ideas for a STEAM lesson?

     5. How do your students "think" about solving problems?

     6. If you teach coding, how do you connect coding to other subjects the student is already learning?

     7. Can your student do STEAM independently using learning tools like videos/workbooks?

     8. Why do you teach or do not teach Science, Tech, Engineering? 

     9. What are some strategies that work? What does your student enjoy about it?

     10. What are some challenges with teaching STEAM at home/club/school

     11. What are some resources you use for STEAM?

     12. How do you encourage your student/s to keep learning STEAM? 

End User - Children -

2. • 13. How do you like to learn ? Books, Stories, Movies, videos, projects?

     14. Do you think stories teach you new things? What is your favorite story?

     15. When something is difficult to understand, how do you learn it? 

     16. What STEM subject do you like?

     17. What do you like to do with the STEM subjects you learn? Do you teach your parents/share with friends /make stuff?

3. If relevant, decide on ideal next steps and commitments

   • 1. I am building a community around STEAM? Would you be interested in joining?

     2. What topics would be interesting to you? S, T, E, A or M?

4. If conversations are the right tool, figure out who to talk to

5. Create a series of best guesses about what the person cares about

6. If a question could be answered via desk research, do that first

------------------------------

Frame the conversation

1. Keep it casual

2. Ask good questions which pass The Mom Test

3. Deflect compliments, anchor fluff, and dig beneath signals

4. Take good notes

5. If relevant, press for commitment and next steps

---------------------------

• With your team, review your notes and key customer quotes

• If relevant, transfer notes into permanent storage

• Update your beliefs and plans

• Decide on the next 3 big questions

-------------------------

Results of a good meeting:

1. Facts — concrete, specific facts about what they do and why they do it

2. (as opposed to the bad data of compliments, fluff, and opinions)

3. Commitment — They are showing they’re serious by giving up something they value such as meaningful amounts of time, reputational risk, or money.

4. Advancement — They are moving to the next step of your real-world funnel and getting closer to a sale.

----------------------

Signs you’re just going through the motions:

1. You’re talking more than they are

2. They are complimenting you or your idea

3. You told them about your idea and don’t know what’s happening next

4. You don’t have notes

5. You haven’t looked through your notes with your team

6. You got an unexpected answer and it didn’t change your idea

7. You weren’t scared of any of the questions you asked

8. You aren’t sure which big question you’re trying to answer by doing this

9. You aren’t sure why you’re having the meeting

-------------------------------

Writing it down — signal symbols:

:) Excited

:( Angry

:| Embarrassed

☇ Pain or problem (symbol is a lightning bolt)

Goal or job-to-be-done (symbol is a soccer/football goal)

☐ Obstacle

⤴ Workaround

^ Background or context (symbol is a distant mountain)

☑ Feature request or purchasing criteria

＄ Money or budgets or purchasing process

♀ Mentioned a specific person or company

☆ Follow-up task

--------------------------

Signs you aren’t pushing for commitment and advancement:

1. A pipeline of zombie leads

2. Ending product meetings with a compliment

3. Ending product meetings with no clear next steps

4. Meetings which "went well"

5. They haven't given up anything of value

----------------------------

Asking for and framing the meeting:

1. Vision — half-sentence version of how you’re making the world better

2. Framing — where you’re at and what you’re looking for

3. Weakness — show how you can be helped

4. Pedestal — show that they, in particular, can provide that help

5. Ask — ask for help

Example -

Or, in shorter form: Vision / Framing / Weakness / Pedestal / Ask

The mnemonic is “Very Few Wizards Properly Ask [for help]." Here's what it might look like before you have a product:

Hey Pete,

I'm trying to make desk & office rental less of a pain for new businesses (vision). We're just starting out and don't have anything to sell, but want to make sure we're building something that actually helps (framing). I've only ever come at it from the tenant's side and I'm having a hard time understanding how it all works from the landlord's perspective (weakness). You've been renting out desks for a while and could really help me cut through the fog (pedestal). Do you have time in the next couple weeks to meet up for a chat? (ask)

Sometimes the 5 parts will be combined into just one or two sentences, or they can be in a different order. For example, the next email sounded a little too pitchy and I was worried he would delete it as sales spam before getting through the first two sentences. As such, I moved my admission of weakness as early as I could get it:

Example of a non pitchy, conversational email/note

Hey Scott, I run a startup trying to make advertising more playful and ultimately effective (vision). We're having a load of trouble figuring out how all the pieces of the industry fit together and where we can best fit into it (weakness). You know more about this industry than anyone and could really save us from a ton of mistakes (pedestal). We're funded and have a couple products out already, but this is in no way a sales meeting -- we're just moving into a new area and could really use some of your expertise (framing). Can you spare a bit of time in the next week to help point us in the right direction over a coffee? (ask)

For interviewing people

{Hey ----, I am looking to partner with communities to start a fun STEAM club for K-5. We meet weekly over Google Hangouts, learn a STEAM topic and have some fun as a group of eager learners. It is for children in K-5 and their families and FREE to join.

Even though I have created my own STEM resources as a homeschool educator, this is the first time I am creating a club for families and I am having trouble figuring out what children and families might like to learn in an ONLINE setting. At home our learning is usually open ended and then we deep dive on what is interesting to us lol! 

You know (how to build communities around (homeschooling families OR STEM) OR how to motivate children to learn and collaborate in a virtual environment) and I could really use your expertise in building a community that families and children would love to engage in. Can you spare a bit of time this week or next to help point me in the right direction over a 20 mins zoom meeting?}

Variation I sent: Homeschooling for College Credit - My favorite HS group!

Hi Jennifer,

Hope you are doing well! I am looking to partner with communities to start a fun STEAM club for K-5. The idea is to meet weekly over Google Hangouts, learn a STEAM topic and have some fun as a group of eager learners. It is for children in K-5 and their families and FREE to join. Even though I have created my own STEM resources as a homeschool educator, this is the first time I am creating a club for families and I am having trouble figuring out what children and families might like to learn in an ONLINE setting. At home our learning is usually open ended and then we deep dive on what is interesting to us lol!

I have used your kindle book and blog resources several times and look up to you for the community you have built and the valuable information you share with us. I could really use your expertise in building a community that families and children would love to engage in. Can you spare a bit of time this week or next to help point me in the right direction over a 20 mins zoom meeting?

Thank you, Anita

Variant I am sending on Messenger - Segment - Homeschoolers

HI am a homeschooling Mom and enjoy your blog! I am looking to start a FB STEAM Club for K-5 families and was wondering if it is OK to share that in this group. I am curious to learn what STEM topics parents/children might be eager to learn? Thank you! Anita 

Variant I used in our local community page -Segment - School going children

Please delete if not allowed. I am looking to start a STEM (Science Tech Engineering & Math) Club online for families with children in K-5. Its FREE and we will meet weekly once using Google hangouts for 30-40 mins to learn something in STEM. I am a homeschooling MOM and want to build a community around STEM learning. If you are interested pls DM me.  Thank you! 

FOR Post in Homeschool Groups

I am starting a fun STEAM club for K-5. We meet weekly over Google Hangouts, learn a STEAM topic and have some fun as a group of eager learners. It is for children in K-5 and their families and FREE to join.

Even though I have created my own STEM resources as a homeschool educator, this is the first time I am creating a club for families and I am having trouble figuring out what children and families might like to learn in an ONLINE setting. At home our learning is usually open ended and then we deep dive on what is interesting to us lol! 

Since you guys already teach structured curriculum, can you help me out? I would appreciate any feedback that I can get as we meet and learn every week from children and/or the parents/teachers. There is nothing to buy and this CLUB will always be free and active. I am creating this learning space to understand what STEM topics might be meaningful for families that I can later translate to self published books and courses down the road.  If you are interested please join us on -------------- and let us know what STEAM areas might be interesting for your family/class to learn as a group?

Thank you!

For Ads

TBD

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People like to help entrepreneurs. But they also hate wasting their time. An opening like this tells them that you know what you need and that they'll be able to make a real difference. Once the meeting starts, you have to grab the reins or it's liable to turn into them drilling you on your idea, which is exactly what you don't want. To do this, I basically repeat what I said in the email and then immediately drop into the first question. If someone else made the introduction, I'll use them as a voice of authority:

Hey Tim, thanks so much for taking the time. As I mentioned in the email, we're trying to make it easier for universities to spin out student businesses (vision) and aren't exactly sure how it all works yet (framing & weakness). I think Tom made this intro (authority) because you have pretty unique insight into what's going on behind the curtain and could really help us get pointed in the right direction (pedestal)…

(introductions continue)

I was looking at your spinout portfolio and it's pretty impressive, especially company X. How did they get from your classroom to where they are now? (grab the reins and ask good questions) These conversations are easy to screw up. As such, you need to be the one in control. You set the agenda, you keep it on topic, and you propose next steps. Don't be a jerk about it, but do have a plan for the meeting and be assertive about keeping it on track. It’s worth noting that this is how I set up meetings from warm intros. The main goal is to clarify what I need and how they can help. Cold approaches are a totally different beast and are much more of a gamble. Again, the point of cold calls is to stop having them. Find a clever ways to generate warm intros and tell those people how they can help. You’ll have a much easier time.

The big prep question:

“What do we want to learn from these guys?”

What assumptions do you have that, if proven wrong, would cause this business to fail? 

1. STEM education in K-5 has a mass market.

2.Computational thinking is the foundation of STEM learning. It is not taught as a meta cognition skill that can be used repeatedly by children to look at problems around them. 

3. STEM is taught in SILOs. An integrated STEM curriculum will improve engagement in STEM and make children life long learners, but is not readily available.

4. Children learn difficult concepts much easier through the emotional connection of stories.

5. Parents don’t feel confident to teach STEM but are willing to work with their students when they are provided with structured material.

6. Students learn using multimedia formats. Videos, printable worksheets, books

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HOW TO BUILD A LARGE COMMUNITY QUICKLY

Chapter 6 - Framing the Meeting

If it sounds weird to unexpectedly interview people, then that's only the case because you're thinking of it as an interview instead of a conversation. The only thing people love talking about more than themselves is their problems. By taking an interest in the problems and minutia of their day, you’re already being more interesting than 99% of the people they’ve ever met. Rule of thumb: If it’s not a formal meeting, you don’t need to make excuses about why you’re there or even mention that you’re starting a business. Just have a good conversation.

Find a good excuse

I am drawing people from existing communities to mine - I offer a speaking event with email registration- I am using the interview opportunity to speak with community organizers so I can build the relationship to share my KS campaign in the future.

I was chatting to an aspiring entrepreneur in a cafe. Among other things, his product helped cafe owners educate potential customers on the origins and backstory of their beans. He had been hitting the pavement for the past 2 weeks and getting turned away from cafe after cafe. He wanted to talk to me about his customer interview process. Ten minutes into the conversation, I cut in: “Who have you talked to so far?” “Nobody—I don’t know the owners and the staff won’t help me.” “Have you talked to this cafe?” “No, I don’t know them.” A waitress walked by and I flagged her down. “Excuse me, can I speak to the owner?” “Umm.” “Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad. This coffee is amazing and I wanted to ask him about the story behind the beans.” The owner wasn't around, but with a good excuse in hand, we were soon chatting with the manager. And the manager, in turn, gave us the owner’s contact details and said he’d be in on Tuesday. You’ve go the ultimate excuse if you have a PhD student on your founding team. “Hello, I’m doing my PhD research on the problems around X, it would be a huge help if I could ask you a couple questions for my dissertation.”

Rule of thumb: If it’s a topic you both care about, find an excuse to talk about it. Your idea never needs to enter the equation and you’ll both enjoy the chat.

Immerse yourself in where they are

Contacting libraries and existing clubs to offer volunteer service

I wanted to build tools for public speakers and conference organisers. I knew a few at the lower and middle tiers, but none of the big names who charge $5-50k per talk, who I thought might be a good customer segment for obvious reasons. I hit the conference circuit and gave free talks everywhere I could. Permanently on the road, everywhere I went was an opportunity to meet new speakers, do favours for event organisers, and learn what they care about. By immersing myself in the community I met a load of people and soon had all the connections and conversations I could handle (I ultimately decided that big speakers and big conferences were a bad customer segment and walked away—not every conversation has to end in finding out your idea is awesome).

Landing pages

Joel Gascoigne did a classic "landing page" test with his startup Buffer, describing the value proposition and collecting emails. But contrary to popular understanding, it wasn't the metrics or conversion rate which convinced him to move forward. Instead, it was the conversations which resulted from emailing every single person who signed up and saying hello. I'm skeptical of the quantitative validation of landing page metrics. But they are certainly a great way to collect emails of qualified leads for you to reach out to and strike up a conversation with. Paul Graham recommends a generic launch for the same purposes. Get your product out there, see who seems to like it most, and then reach out to those users.

This is starting to bring the customers to you instead of going to them, but still involves sending a mostly cold email. Next we'll look at how to run with this principle to make our lives even easier.

Bringing them to you

When you are finding ways to sneak into customer conversations, you're always on the back foot. You made the approach, so they are suspicious and trying to figure out if you're wasting their time. Instead, we can look for ways to separate ourselves from the crowd so they can find us. Beyond saving you vast sums of time and frustration, bringing people to you also makes them take you more seriously and want to help you more. How can you plant a flag your customers can see? What can you offer them that will make them want to talk to you?

Organise meetups (STEAM Club Online)

For marginally more effort than attending an event, you can organise your own and benefit from being the centre of attention. Want to figure out the problems HR professionals have? Organise an event called “HR professionals happy hour”. People will assume you’re credible just because you happen to be the person who sent the invite emails or introduced the speaker. You'll have an easy time chatting to them about their problems. Nobody ever follows this recommendation, but it’s the first thing I would do if I got moved a new industry or geography. It’s literally the most unfair trick I know for rapid customer learning. As a bonus, it also instantly bootstraps your industry credibility.

Speaking & teaching (Go to STEM /Homeschooling Conferences/Clubs)

Teaching is under-valued as both a learning and selling tool. Let's say you're making better project management software. In that case, you probably have both expertise and a strongly held opinion about how things could be better. That’s the magic combination for being an effective teacher. Spend the time to teach. You'll find chances at conferences, workshops, through online videos, blogging, or doing free consulting or office hours. You'll refine your message, get in touch with a room full of potential customers who take you seriously, and will learn which parts of your offering resonate (before you’ve even built it). Then simply chat up the attendees who are most keen.

Industry blogging

If you have a reasonably sized and relevant blog audience, lining up conversations is a total non-issue. You just write a post about it and ask people to get in touch. Of course, not everyone has a relevant audience. That’s one big reason to start blogging to your customers today.

Even when I had no audience, I still found blogging to be helpful. When I sent cold emails from my blog email address, folks would often meet with me because they had checked my domain, seen my industry blog, and figured I was an interesting person to talk to. In other words, the traffic and audience were irrelevant. Blogging about an industry is also a good exercise to get your thoughts in a row. It makes you a better customer conversationalist.

Get clever

I once heard a brilliant hack from a guy who wanted to sell to top-tier universities like Stanford and Harvard. But first he needed to understand their problems (difficult) and be taken seriously by the decision makers (even more difficult). His solution was to organise a semi-monthly "knowledge exchange" call between the department heads of 3 top universities to discuss the challenges around his topic of choice. Furthermore, it was set up as a conference call where any other universities could dial in and listen to the best practices of the big 3.

By simply organising the call and playing host, he immediately absorbed all the credibility of the top universities and got direct phone access to a pile of great leads. (World Record for the most coded folktale , STEM Info session with registration for Teacher and HS groups)

Every business is different. Don't just copy what someone else is doing. Consider your own situation, and then get clever.

Creating warm intros

Warm intros are the goal. Conversations are infinitely easier when you get an intro through a mutual friend that establishes your credibility and reason for being there.

7 degrees of bacon

The world is a relatively small place. Everyone knows someone. We just have to remember to ask. I was talking to a team of recent graduates who needed to reach McKinsey style consultants. They were pulling their hair out. We were in a coworking space full of other young entrepreneurs, so I just stood on a chair and yelled, “Excuse me! Does anyone here know anyone who works at McKinsey? Can we talk to you for a second? We’ll buy you a beer — you could really help us out!” They bought 3 beers, had 3 quick chats, and left with a diary full of intros. This is even easier for consumer products. Not everyone knows folks at McKinsey, but everybody does know, for example, a recent mom or amateur athlete or theatre enthusiast.

Rule of thumb: Kevin Bacon’s 7 degrees of separation applies to customer conversations. You can find anyone you need if you ask for it a couple times.

1. Trio Fields - Girls Scouts, Teachers 

2. Mr.Chip's son

3. Michelle Fishburne

4. Jeff Richardson

5. PAECT

6. St Luis Coastal Unified School District, Katie Peters

7. PromiseNeighborhoodLV -Mr.Batts

8. Homeschool for College Credit

9. NCC Reibman Hall Families

10. Chitag - Mary Couzin

Resources and Links- People I don't know

1. • Homeschool Co-ops, clubs and Homeschool FB Groups

   • STEM Teachers K-5 - CS is Elementary

   • PA Afterschool Youth Dev N/w

   • Teachers using STEM in classroom PAECT

   • Parents & Children with a growth mindset - FB Group - 'Kids with a growth mindset' 

Industry advisors - LIN ERICKSON - DaVinci Science Center

I relied heavily on advisors in my first company. We didn't know the industry and nobody took us seriously. Our 5 advisors each had around a half percent of equity and basically just made credible intros. I met with each once per month, so I ended up getting a fresh batch of intros weekly without it being a huge time burden for any of them. On a bit of a tangent, you'd be surprised by the quality of the folks you can get to join your advisory board. The first conversation with a good advisor looks similar to the first conversation with a flagship customer: you get along and are talking about a space you both care about. You can sometimes poach killer advisors from your early customer conversations.

Universities - LaunchBOX, Dr. Tina Richardson, Chancellor LV Penn State

I'm jealous of founders who are still in (or recently out of) university. Professors are a goldmine for intros. They get their grant funding from high level industry folks they're on good terms with. And since they’re investing in research, those industry folks are self-selected to be excited about new projects. Professors are easy to get in touch with if you don't know them yet. They post their emails and you can just wander into their office.

Investors

Top-tier investors are awesome for B2B intros. Beyond their own rolodex and company portfolio, they can usually pull off cold intros to practically any industry. Investors can also help you close higher-tier advisors and directors than you'd be able to wrangle on your own. Who has bought in to your idea already? Who could they connect you to?