Thursday, August 1, 2013

The value of your network

Anyone who starts a company, whatever the sector, will sooner or later need to sell some products or services... and very often this will happen sooner rather than later. The initial money from the founder's savings or initial investment will allow for the so much development of a product or skills to be sold until the funds run out. At this point the company will be caught by the business imperative : find some money to continue or die. And unless a new funding round can be secured, the company will need to sell something, which will finally happen some day anyway.

At the point of selling, the obvious contacts base any company will turn to is the primary network which will have been aggregated previously, during the early stage of the company or, much more likely, during past experience of the founder and eventual associates or employees. This will be the first test of the quality of a company's offer: if it cannot sell into its primary network, and is unable to reach further directly, it is destined to end.

If it does sell to its core network of close family and friends, with extensions to former work colleagues, long-lost acquaintances and casual encounters that become friends and customers as your offer triggers a closer relationship that satisfies one of their needs, it passes this first step and goes on to the next round of finding more clients and more money to keep on developing products and/or learning new skills to serve.

As for me, I would like to thank my friends and family, whom I am very much grateful to, for having been my earliest support and initial customer base for my first venture, the digital agency Fluorcom, especially:
Though this initial input of money and credit for your products or services can be important to continue going forward, your primary network will also give you an opportunity for growth by enabling you to learn from them and/or benefit from their extended network to services other people or companies like them or linked to them.

From them you can get access to an extended network, acquire extra specific skills or knowledge of a particular environment, sector or industry that will allow you to sell better, resell or sell further. That is what happened to me and my company: thanks to my first clients, I could reach to more clients, learn more from their particular industry and expand further into similar environments. And I guess, this is the subsequent step towards the success of your venture: go beyond your own network. Hopefully I can write more about this soon ;).