Heidi Roizen: Why Your Network Is Your Net Worth | Silicon Valley VC Advice

Make yourself easy to find. People can't help you if they can't find you. And so this is a really, you know, this is pretty simple, it's pretty basic, but it's amazing to me how many people don't do this. Make sure you're in your alumni database after you graduate. Make sure that you're in LinkedIn. Make sure that you are putting a, you know, that you have a decent email address. It's funny to me that like people will have these wacky email addresses and it's sort of like you look at that and you go, what does that say about a person? Remember that people are always sort of evaluating you about every little touchpoint they get. is going to leave them with an impression. Put a signature block on your email so people know that it's, you know, who you are and how to find you. And then also as a final point, be a little careful about what you post to social media sites. Be really careful. I would just say, particularly when you're starting out, about, you know— well, Sheryl Sandberg says this funny thing. She says, if we could only hire people who didn't have a picture of themselves drunk on a Saturday night on Facebook, we'd have no employees. So, I mean, I think we all kind of get it. People have personal lives and they like to have fun, but there are things that are sort of, you know, just anytime you post something, imagine that someone is interviewing you for a job and they happen on your Facebook page or they sign up to follow you on Twitter. What are they going to think of you? And just keep that in mind because whether you like it or not, in many ways you are increasingly easy to find and you should be very aware of that. The next thing is make yourself easy to help. Asking for help is one of the greatest things you can learn how to do and be comfortable doing. But you also have to understand that it's a transaction and it's a relationship-building opportunity. And when you do it, making it easy for the other person to help you will oftentimes not only be the difference between whether that person helps you or not, but how that other person thinks about you. So I'm going to give you an example because it's a lot more easy to give you an example. I meet with lots of entrepreneurs and I know lots of venture capitalists. And at the end, the entrepreneur will— they'll tell me about their deal and whatever and I'll say, oh, you should meet with— maybe you should meet with firms A, B, and C. And they'll say, great. Okay. I'll follow up with emails for those firms. Then they'll send me an email and say, dear Heidi, thank you so much for being willing to introduce me to firms A, B, and C. Here's my business plan. Super psyched. Thanks a lot. Okay. What's wrong with that email? I can't just forward that email, right? It has firms A, B, and C in there. First of all, it's compet— those firms are competitive. So I can't just forward it to someone. I have to do work. I have to take that email apart. I have to save the attachment. I have to rewrite the email a little bit because that's not in and of itself actionable. The other thing that I think is a more subtle thing is The person missed the opportunity to do something better. They— I'm going to use my connection to forward an email to Tim Draper, right? And they've asked me to forward it to Tim and to 2 other people. Don't you think the email would be better received if they say, thank you so much for offering to introduce me to Tim Draper. I've read all about him, and I think that his forward thinking about, you know, The space industry fits so in line with what I'm doing with my company, blah. So knowing that I'm gonna use something, that I'm gonna make a connection, if you're asking me for that favor and you make your piece of it more compelling, right, it looks better, you have an opportunity, and I feel more inclined to pass it along because I'm also in scanning it getting that endorsement that, I mean, I'm validating it and saying, hey, I think this is a good idea. So I would just encourage you when you think about asking people for help, recognize other people are really busy, right? We're all really busy. We're all doing stuff. And generally speaking, especially when you're starting out, you're going to ask people for help who are even busier than you are and very often in higher-level positions. And so you have to sort of make it as easy as possible for them. And also I think give them an easy out because one thing that makes people uncomfortable is when you ask for help and you're kind of insistent and you won't take no for an answer. And I know you're all entrepreneurs. And I know not taking no for an answer is one of the things you learn, and I think it's a good thing. And you have to be persistent, but you have to find that really nice balance between persistence and stalkerism, right, or unreasonableness. And so I think that you have to recognize that for other people sometimes they will have to say no. And I believe in anytime I ask someone for a favor, I ask someone to look at a resume, if they know of a job for someone, at the bottom I say, If you can't be of help, feel free to hit delete. If I don't need a response. If I do need a response, I'll say, let me know if you're comfortable with this, and no is a perfectly good answer. Because I really believe in leaving the person an out. I think it helps you keep the door open with that person to be able to ask for other favors and make it easy for them to be able to say no. Makes them more comfortable with looking at the favor and deciding if they're going to do it or not. So if you only take away 2 things from this lecture, it would be this is how to set yourself apart. And I'm going to tell you this and you're going to say, oh, that's ridiculous, Heidi. Everyone does that. And I'm going to tell you right now from my vast experience, 95% of people won't do this. And if you do this, you'll set yourself apart. So number one is do your homework. And number 2 is Do your homework and say thank you. Okay, I know that sounds like kindergarten. I'm sure your mom or dad told you that when you were a little kid. Do your homework and say thank you. You would be amazed how many people don't do this. So first of all, do your homework. You're going into a meeting with someone. Google them, read their LinkedIn page, see if, you know, some people leave their Facebook profiles open, some people tweet. Go look, go figure that person out a little bit. It's going to give you a starting point for a conversation. And it's going to show that you respected that you were using that other person's time by getting yourself prepared. Know what you're coming in to ask about. Know what you're coming in to do. When you have an opportunity to talk to somebody about career advice, don't just walk in and say, well, I'm here, what can you tell me about careers? Say, hey, I read that you worked at, you know, Heidi, I read you worked at Apple as a VP and I know you started your own company and now you're a venture capitalist. Which of those careers was best for you? Did you like being in a corporation? How did that work? The more you can come in engaged and show that you did your homework, and it isn't about— actually, I'm gonna take this back. It's not about showing you did your homework. It's actually doing homework so you can be more productive. And I'll tell you, this goes through all your life. It's amazing to me how many situations I get in where the difference, the 5 minutes it might take me to look at somebody's profile or to flip through a pitch deck before they come in or to see who we're connected to in common and ask somebody, Do you know this person? Can make a meeting incredibly, incredibly more productive for me and the other person. The other point is to say thank you. And saying thank you is sort of a bigger— a part of a bigger thing, which is— oops, I'm going a little bit out of order here. Let me see here. Yes. Is we're all humans on the inside. So what you have to think about with people is— and again, I see this in a lot of people just starting out. They're so anxious and nervous and they're so You know, ready to go talk to you and make an impression, that they see you as this non-human thing. They see you as this either obstacle to what they want or gatekeeper to what they want or whatever. And they don't think about the fact that, hey, all of us, we have a life too, right? Maybe, maybe our dog got hit by a car yesterday. Maybe our child has a disease. Maybe we're going through a difficult divorce. You don't know. You don't know what's going on. On the person on the other side. And remembering that we're all human, we all have our issues, we all have our personal things going on in our lives. And understanding if sometimes, you know, have you ever had that experience where— this happened to me a couple months ago— I got on a plane and the person in front of me, I pissed him off somehow and he was just super rude to me. And I didn't even know what I had done, you know, and it just made me feel bad the whole time. And I even said to the guy, could you tell me what I did so I'd know not to do it again? He's like, I don't want to talk to you. And I don't know, I don't know if I— Like put my rolly bag in his spot or I don't know what it was, but it just disturbed me. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, Heidi, take your own advice. We don't know what happened to that guy this morning. Maybe his wife left him this morning. Who knows, right? Shit happens to people all the time. So do recognize that every time you're in an interaction with a person, even if it's a business person, I think having a little bit of that understanding that we're all humans, that we appreciate being thanked, That we'll remember people who thank us, that when someone goes out of their way to do something for you, letting them know that you appreciate it. And even if it's their job, right? I got a new laptop this week from the IT person at DFJ, and I sent him a thank you note saying, hey, thanks for my laptop, I really appreciate it. Okay, you know, it was his job to get me a laptop, but he got me a laptop, I set it up, it was working, I wanted to close the loop. And he sent me a note. He said, oh, thanks for letting me know. And I'm, you know, I have a sneaking suspicion that not everybody sends a thank you note when they get something that they're supposed to get anyway. But my feeling about that is, is it's just a good thing. It's good human— and you're going to find this about much of my advice. You can look at my advice and you can either say, well, Heidi, that's manipulative. You're talking about acknowledging people as humans. You're talking about saying thank you for every little thing or whatever. That's— you're just manipulative. Or you can say, well, gee, that's just about being a good person.