

I don’t have any connections - awwstn
http://ninjasandrobots.com/i-dont-have-any-connections

======
onepost51515
Heh. A rant, if I may:

I lived in a small town in northern Canada until I was 17. I had had an
interest in programming since I was 11, but the job most relevant to
"computers" you could get up there was repairing them at BestBuy. My parents
weren't particularly rich, and didn't encourage me to strive for high
academics or anything of the sort; in fact, the only thing they really wanted
me to do was to get a driver's license, so I could have a fallback job as a
truck driver. I hadn't a single role-model for the "white-collar dream" I
found myself pulled into from playing with Linux and reading Slashdot. I just
knew I couldn't manage it living where I did.

At 17, I finished high-school and, with virtually no separation, moved to a
more reasonably-large city (Vancouver) and began taking courses at a community
college. I believed, at the time, that taking my first two years at a
"cheaper" school would be good for my future student-loan-debt load, and
optimized for this instead of, say, networking opportunities. The community
college was full of unmotivated students just trying to squeak by, teachers
who knew less about CS than I had learned from the Internet, and in the end, I
didn't feel motivated enough† to make the grades to manage a transfer into the
CS program of the "state" university (UBC.) My student loans cut off, and I
dropped out.

I started attempting to do software-dev contracting. (It's very hard to get
full-time employment as a developer without a Bachelor's, whether or not
you're an autodidact with 8+ years' experience in some technologies.) I moved
from one gig to another, never really finding that fabled "word of mouth" that
would let me lever one contracting job into another. I always worked alone,
and remotely; I was never hired onto a team. I looked on eLance a lot.

I still haven't made, in all this time (I'm 23 now), a single "programmer
friend" who would qualify as a connection, nor met a programmer in person from
whom I've learned a single fact, rule, or concept I wasn't already familiar
with, or been introduced to any neat new technology. This isn't bragging about
my talents--rather, just painting a picture of the bottom-of-the-barrel places
I've been hanging out. I'm sure I would feel out-of-my-depth (in the best way)
sitting in any arbitrary coffee shop in Silicon Valley‡, or in any even-
somewhat-modern startup here or elsewhere.

If you want to talk about lacking connections, first imagine the closest thing
to a "programmer" in your Facebook friends list being your friend from high-
school who does accounting at an oil-and-gas firm. Imagine everyone in your
family saying that the one time you got paid $50k was "a fluke and won't
happen again; you should just work at a gas station like your mom and your
aunt do" (leaving alone the fact that you don't have enough customer-service
experience to be considered for that job in a competitive market.) Imagine
having no major portfolio pieces you can show off, despite years of coding,
because you've alternated between struggling to survive on a total dry-up of
income with no savings (no time for side-projects), and doing programming jobs
for capricious clients who take your backend system and give up on the idea
before hiring a front-end guy, relegating your efforts to only be examinable
through API calls and doodles of wireframes. (And while you're at it, imagine
having a few friends in the US, who have perfectly good job opportunities
available for you with their companies, but who can't help you out until you
go back and finish school--which you can't, at least yet, afford to do.)

But there is that app I made two years ago that I still have in closed beta,
the browser-based-collaboration-environment one with an active community even
when I don't check in on it for weeks at a time. No time to remodel it into
something good enough to launch to the public... but it lets me call myself a
startup founder nevertheless. I'm just in stealth-mode, that's it. Heh.

\---

† Having undiagnosed ADHD may have had something to do with that as well. I
imagine, having detected and compensated for that flaw, I would be quite
better at slogging through that remedial-feeling workload if I had to do the
same now.

‡ I'd love to move there, actually... if I had American citizenship. Or an
undergraduate degree to legally qualify me for an H1B or TN work visa. Blocked
on all fronts, there.

~~~
bigtunacan
I waffled on whether or not to reply here, due to the personal nature of some
of what I have to say, but here it is.

First; quit making excuses and having regrets. Either get off your ass and
make it happen or be satisfied with not doing so. This is the only life you
are going to get. It is short, and people in far worse situations have gotten
further because they aren't afraid to try.

I grew up in total poverty, surrounded by poor uneducated friends and family,
mostly who had defeatist attitudes that nothing better was possible for them.
We were a family of poor white trash the whole time I was growing up. Everyone
at school looked down on me and mine. Some of my immediate family, friends,
cousins I grew up with are now addicts, thieves, pushers. Some of them are in
rehab, some of them are dead; one in a shoot out with the cops. Most of the
rest are working dead end jobs and drinking their way to early graves.

During my junior year in high school, my friend Mike looked at me and asked,
"What are you going to do after high school?" I told him I was going to go to
college, get a good job; and eventually maybe start my own business. Mike
said, "That's a nice dream, but you're just going to end up hanging around
here getting high and drinking yourself to death like the rest of us, because
that's who we are. We're losers."

As a child I was beaten, stabbed, ate food out of dumpsters. On top of all of
this I have terrible ongoing chronic medical illnesses and have had since I
was a very small child. I can say, emphatically, my situation was worse than
yours.

Now I have been writing software for 15 years, and I am not the best, but I'm
damn good at what I do. I make enough money; I live a good life. I have
connections. None of this was given to me. I worked and sweated, I gave, and I
took back. And when everyone said, "You can't."; I said, "I will."

------
mindcrime
Cold emailing / cold calling definitely works. But it's a Good Idea to do your
homework first. Here's a little tip I learned some time ago, and have been
working on implementing lately:

Say you want to sell something to Foobar, Incorporated. But you have no warm
contacts there. OK, you can go to Hoovers.com, or use LinkedIn, Jigsaw, etc.
and get names, contact info, etc. BUT... and here's the "tip" part... on
LinkedIn you can also find people who _used to work for Foobar, Inc._ and
contact them first. Why? Because there is a good chance they'll offer to talk
to you (people like to be helpful and it makes them feel important) and they
have little to lose (they don't work there anymore), but yet they can still
give you TONS of valuable inside information (depending on how long they've
been gone) to help you establish credibility when you do call.

Example: The info on LinkedIn, Hoovers, etc. can be outdated. So let's say you
have a list of 15 names of people at Foobar, Inc. Some of those people
probably aren't there anymore, or have changed titles, etc. When you talk to
an ex employee, you can run through the list with them and find out what's
going on.

You also get a chance to ask things like:

"Who is the _real_ power broker over there?"

or

"Are there any big landmines I should know to avoid walking into"?

or

"What are the main strategic issues management is grappling with there"?

etc.

Of course, not all ex employees will want to talk to you, but for any
reasonably sized company, you should be able to find a few. And, you do have
to be aware that they, in turn, have their biases and misconceptions, etc.,
and so you can't take everything they say as Gospel truth. But go through the
exercise with a couple of people and you should be able to get pretty clear
picture.

Now when you call somebody at Foobar, you can start off sounding very
credible:

"I know companies like yours often deal with issue X, and may have tried
solutions like Z that didn't work... I'd like to talk to you about another way
of solving that problem..."

Where you learned about "X" and "Z" from those "ex employee talks".

------
inthesea
I'm not sure if I'm alone here but I just lack social skills. It's like
everyone but me has this secret book of how to interact with people. I'm not
autistic or anything but I had little social life when growing up. I was
actually rather popular at the Internet but that didn't translate well to real
life. I'm now trying to catch up in my early twenties. I meet interesting
people every day but connecting with them non-superficially is the hardest
part. I am too shy to talk about anything and I have low self-esteem. I
literally start to mumble when telling a story if I don't know the person
well. So far rationalizing about it hasn't helped.

It's a wonder I managed to get a few friends.

~~~
jason_tko
This is something I see pretty often. I'm a business co-founder, so this stuff
is pretty much my bread and butter.

An idea I've been kicking around is some kind of "Social Skills Primer" type
product, probably done by video for ease of explanation and to capture/explain
nuance.

I haven't fully decided on doing this yet, but would that be interesting to
you, do you think?

As a side note, I would highly recommend reading How to Win Friends and
Influence People.

------
nraynaud
I'm still a bit wary of this kind of advice, because it's mostly pushing
against the technological meritocracy. The loudest in the room gets the light,
the most outspoken is raised as an example. All this effort is still not spent
building the right product. I live in France, where the tradition is that
money, marketing and sales people run the company. The only successful
startups here now are selling advertisement, optimizing advertisement (or
whatever retargeting is), dealing personal data and other user-bothering
technology. Nobody is optimizing mousetraps or producing media content
anymore. But hey, they worked their connections while you where making smoke
in the lab.

~~~
babebridou
You forgot another company runner in France, and a very important one: the
procurement people.

These guys make it incredibly difficult to build new businesses. In their mind
contracting a company with less than a hundred people is heresy.

~~~
tluyben2
Not heresy; it's risky. If you do it and stuff goes wrong, your boss will ask
you wtf you hired this puny company and not a large one. No matter the
reputation of the large one (bad or good) or the reputation of the small one
(bad or good).

------
aleprok
I know connections between people can be quite awesome and important. It is
even more awesome if they can discuss about something important and give their
opinion and listen to your opinion without starting a fight. When there is a
problem it is good to have someone to ask help from.

I maybe have one true friend and we mutually keep our friendship active. Then
there are those who may drink coffee or have a beer with me now and then, but
we never really talk about anything important. Then there are those so called
social media friends who really do not care what you do. Then there are these
few people who use my kindness quite often for help as they have found I will
most likely help them anyway I can.

Seriously I have tried to keep in contact with people who may some day become
great people. The problem I have is that I lose motivation to stay in one way
contact when the other does not seem to care a shit how my days go even though
I try all kinds of things to get them active even though I am not in need of
any kind of help at the moment, but in future I might be.

It's not like I want to be liked, but maybe a call to a bar and have fun once
would be nice. Why it always has to be me who initiates almost every damn
discussion or happening where I could take part in this tiny circle of my so
called friends. These days I don't even care to try and just let them be and
answer them if they have a problem.

When talking about these connections with famous people you could take
advantage of I often do not even press the send button because I've realized
my own stupidity after explaining my problem in the email. I'm not looking for
help. I'm just stating that lonely people can solve problems and have fun too,
though if someone would see me having fun alone they probably would say I'm
going nuts.

Good Friday from Finland.

~~~
AznHisoka
That's just human nature. People don't care how you're doing unless it
benefits them now, or possibly in the future. I just learn not to rely on
human interaction for my life satisfaction.

~~~
aleprok
Yeah there is so much entertainment around these days that we really do not
need friends anymore to just hang around and waste time.

------
beat
Making contact with people isn't the hard part, I don't think. Motivating them
to help you is the hard part.

~~~
nate
Thanks a ton for the comment on this and reading the article!

But see, I don't think motivating someone to help you is really that hard. As
I mentioned in there, there are so many places where there's oodles of people
who'd love to help. Want to ask Alexis Ohanian something? Pay attention to
when he hosts another AMA on Reddit. Or use Clarity or Public Beta. Or really
just email them. I answer a ton of questions I get over email.

There are a couple reasons though sometimes I don't reply to an email "looking
for help":

1\. The email is thousands of words long. I don't have time to read that. Very
few people do. Keep these intros and notes and questions to 5 sentences or 500
characters, or try your hardest to get close.

2\. Ask something. I get too many emails looking for help, but when you read
the email, there's isn't actually a question inside. What do you need help
with? Be specific. "Feedback" is way too open. You want Feedback on design, or
features or marketing or what? It's best to focus me on something so I can
save time figuring out how I can actually help you.

And if you really want to use some extra encouragement to get people to help
you, flattery gets you everywhere. Mention what you've been reading of theirs.
Quote their stuff on Twitter.

~~~
bigtunacan
Totally in agreement. I've emailed business owners relevant questions to
projects I'm working on and 8 times out of 10 they reply back. I keep it
short, to the point, and thank them up front for their time.

Also, I see too many people that say something like, "No one wants to help
me." Everyone WANTS help; to get help you need to give some. Start networking
like crazy, find out what someone else needs and provide that. It takes time
and dedication, but you will be reciprocated.

------
ArekDymalski
I'm pretty sure that for many people even such cold email can be intimidating.
On rational level they know it's the necessary thing to do, but the fear of
rejection drags them toward "I'm not ready yet. I'll mail them a week later
when I build/write/learn more".

~~~
mnavada
I agree, or you lose hope in the process. You're not going to get a reply the
first time or even the 100th time, but if you believe that it works and keep
modifying your approach in the email, it can work. I've tried sending cold
emails and I got a reply after the 12th time. I try to tailor the email to
each person. It's more time consuming and I can't send them as often as I
want, but I find this more effective.

------
joshfraser
Some of my best personal & business relationships started with a cold email
and a random coffee meeting.

~~~
nate
One thing I'll probably cover in the future is one of the things that have
made these cold emails and random meetings successful is simply being clear
about what I want.

I've made the mistake many times of simply saying "I'd love to chat for 15
minutes". Even "I'd love to get your feedback" isn't enough usually.

Specific questions like "I'd love to hear how you'd design this" or "What
would you do next here to get more traffic" or "Would you try this with a
collaborator and see if it makes your life easier" generates better hits and
more useful conversations.

------
osetinsky
I think a lot of the problem when it comes to making new connections is
unwarranted shyness. If you know the other party is open to new
messages/meeting requests from strangers (which they sometimes are!), it
becomes less intimidating to reach out. Online dating sites like OkCupid have
dealt with this problem really well by creating a community of people open to
receiving messages _of a particular kind_ from strangers. It's totally
appropriate to ask a stranger out on OkCupid. It isn't so appropriate on
Facebook.

I'd really appreciate people checking out my first web application, called
Treatings (treatings.co). It's a community of professionals open to meeting
strangers over coffee to discuss their work. No one is guaranteeing meetings
with anyone, but everyone is open to meeting requests and the possibility of
being treated to coffee/a drink by a stranger interested in their background.

treatings.co/activity

------
mnavada
We recently secured a small investment from an angel investor without prior
connections. Having graduated from an Ivy League 12 years ago, I realized that
more than school affiliation, it was our team, product, vision, and
perseverance that made a difference. I used to regret not networking more in
school, but quickly realized that in the startup world, you have to be a
problem solver. No time for regrets or to crib about the present. Thanks for
this article. I'm going to distribute this to my team.

