I caught an early flight out of LAX yesterday morning. I sat next to a woman who slept all the way to SF. I am always jealous of people who can do that. I don’t sleep much on planes.
When we landed in SF and were taxiing to our gate, she woke and checked her phone. She landed on my daily email, read the bit about flying to SF, and turned to me, showed me the AVC email, and said “is this you?” I replied “yes.”
It turns out she works for a startup and knows people who have worked for various USV portfolio companies. And she uses Foursquare.
We had a nice chat, I bought one of her company’s products, I am mulling over the idea of buying another one, and I pitched a BD partnership between her company and one of Gotham Gal’s portfolio companies.
Why am I telling this story? Because it’s good to have a calling card in business and this blog is mine. It pays off all the time. It widens my network constantly.
I am not saying that everyone should blog. That’s not going to work for most people. But finding some way to connect to the people you should know is huge. It could be public speaking, it could be publishing research, it could be going to conferences all the time. Whatever it is, getting out there and networking and meeting people is the secret to building a big rolodex. And a big rolodex is an incredible asset to have.
