Ryan Micheletti, Director of Global Operations for the Founder Institute, argues that early-stage entrepreneurs need strong networks to survive naysayers and access investors. Most seed and angel funding comes through personal connections, not cold outreach. He recommends attending one event weekly and joining relevant associations to build yours.
Hello everyone, my name is Ryan Micheletti and I'm Director of Global Operations for the Founder Institute. Today I'd like to talk to you about the importance of building your network, especially at the early stage of building your company. So it's really important that you surround yourself with like-minded individuals because especially like when you're first starting off, you're gonna run into a lot of nos, a lot of naysayers, and people who say it can't be done. Well, the opposite is true. It can be done. And you need to surround yourself with a support network that's going to help you with that mentality and keep you going day in and day out to push against all odds to build that company. The second important thing is that even just like one piece of good mentor feedback can entirely change the trajectory of a company. So it's important to leverage experienced individuals who know about your business, who know about, you know, the industry, who can help guide you to avoid early mistakes that a lot of founders make at the very beginning of their journey. A third and a very important part is most of the investors who will invest in you, especially the earliest stages, whether it's your seed or angel round, they're gonna be warm leads. They're gonna be people that know people you know. You're never gonna raise a round by randomly messaging people on LinkedIn, so it's extremely important that you build a very strong local network that can help you succeed and help you raise money and get early customers. And so how do you build these networks? Well, I recommend founders go to at least one event a week, right? These could be like public events from different entrepreneurship groups or maybe joining an association that could help surround them with like-minded people or people of similar mindsets. Or you can also join the Founder Institute's world-renowned Pre-Seed Startup Accelerator. We have the largest mentor network in the world of over 11,000 mentors in 200 cities around the world. And they can help provide you with the expert feedback and advice needed to take your startup to the next level. If you're interested, go ahead and apply by going to fi.co/join, and we'd love to help you build your company.
