Founders, Startups & Communities.

Building and maintaining your network is important but is that everything? A community is made up of all of the actors in the region and us community geeks call this a network. The first step in community building is to make sure you get all of the nodes (people not organizations) mapped out. The second step is to try and see who is already connected and to connect those not yet connected to each other. This can take months if not years. To do this effectively you need a number of leaders/influencers to actually work at this daily. Some may call this a form of networking and for now let’s refer to this as community networking. As you begin to build out your community network, it is essential that you don’t stop at mapping and connecting the recognizable actors. Which means you have to work at finding and connecting with Net New players. If your idea of managing your network is simply reaching out to old professional friends to get an update on what they are doing over a coffee or beer, then I would argue that you are operating at a “B” level. Congrats on actually reaching out to …