Comments on: No One Told Me What Being an Entrepreneur Really Means

By: Polishing Marble

Polishing Marble — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:06:00 +0000

Some good comments out here! I liked the site a lot!Great job!

By: Tarek Demiati

Tarek Demiati — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:50:24 +0000

I thought that in day & age most people were pretty comfortable contacting people,
The art of pitching & approaching people is more relevant that firing up a mail client …
I would have tought that the hardest part of being a CEO is bringing culture into the company & product, a rare skill is being able to morph the product when you've headed the wrong way,
which can be a reason why most startups fails …

By: Phone Man

Phone Man — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:40:18 +0000

I completely agree with you. I got off the ground on my internet business by contacting and trying to network with hundreds of different webmasters. Some said no, some said hell no, and others decided to help me out. It ain't easy but its got to be done.

By: MrLoftcraft

MrLoftcraft — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:34:25 +0000

You surely know what you are talking about.

By: Scott

Scott — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 11:44:46 +0000

Big picture, but Steve Case gave a great talk at Stanford a few months back at E-Week. For him it was the 3 P's: People, Passion and Perseverance. Sounds like you've figured out the perseverance part. Hang in there! http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo....

By: williambswift

williambswift — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:11:10 +0000

He didn't say that that makes you an entrepreneur - he said that is one thing that he has to do as an entrepreneur that he wasn't expecting.

There was another post, I think about a year ago on HN, where a founder pointed out that he ended up cleaning the company's toilets until they could afford to hire a janitor. There are all kinds of jobs that need to be done for a business to function that many people don't realize beforehand.

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:53:38 +0000

i guess that's not all of it..but i agree.. you got the point of it..nice post

By: Paul Rosania

Paul Rosania — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:47:00 +0000

Very interesting, thank you!nnMy company, CollegeJobConnect (collegejobconnect.com) uses email extensively for outreach into the employer world, but mostly through warm leads. Have you seen decent response rates from cold emails? My concern is always ROI vs. time spent, if response and conversion rates are low.nnI do agree that email has replaced a lot of outreach. It is just so much more time-efficient. Once we get a hook, though, the phone has played a big role in getting more nuanced conversations going.

By: alain94040

alain94040 — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:56:28 +0000

Let's see. You e-mail service providers. You e-mail investors and VCs. Potential users. Press and bloggers. People you met once at a party in case they can recommend a good developer.

I wasn't talking about spam. You are e-mailing all these people with legitimate business reasons, not just pushing a product. You may have met those people informally. But you are very often in the position to try to establish the first dialogue with them.

Also, e-mail is so key. 10 years ago, people used to "go outside the building" to meet their customers and everyone else, but now it has changed a lot. I didn't go into details, but for people whose e-mail you can't find, you may ping them on twitter or facebook and hope they reply.

By: slowpoison

slowpoison — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 04:42:56 +0000

And this doesn't just go for marketing, or advertising, it goes for funding, and recruiting too.
It's funny, just today, I was thinking about how I should step out of my comfort zone to recruit aggressively for my projects.