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Ask HN: How to get industry insights and meet people outside your bubble?
59 points by nielsole on Jan 7, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 31 comments
Ask HN: How to get industry insights? / Meet people outside your bubble?

I am very interested in the inner structure and dynamics of industries. In the last years I got to know a few industries through old friends and school buddies. Unfortunately the circle of my peers seems to narrow in on computer science from year to year and it becomes more rare to get such insights.

The industries can be as trivial as german christmas markets. For example: Are the stands organized business or individuals? How much revenue do you expect on a weekday? How much value is captured by the organizer of entire markets (probably the district/city?)? How much money is spent on marketing/advertisement?

Ultimately I am also looking for startup ideas: Where in the value chain are inefficiencies? For what reason are they there? (precursor to Peter Thiels famous "thing you know, that no one else knows/believes")

The answers to some of these questions are not publicly available. I spent the day today in the library and found that information in books on these topics is often outdated or nonexistent. This might be due to this type of information often being considered a company secret (e.g. revenue per day) or the data is never collected because of its perceived triviality (business size of christmas stands)

How do you approach these questions?

Ultimately this is a question on networking. How do you meet people from different industries outside of your cirlce?




If you live in the Bay Area, hang out around Union Square in SF this week and strike up conversations with the people in suits hanging around in the hotel lobbies / coffee shops / bars. This week is the JP Morgan healthcare conference, the biggest healthcare investor conference in the world (with a strong emphasis on biopharma), and a great chance to learn more about biopharma

I personally believe that biopharma is the most interesting sector for entrepreneurs right now, and am currently writing a blog post to explain why (hope to publish it tonight or tomorrow). If interested, I can link it here once I'm finished.

One data point of interest: in the first four days of this year, biopharma startups raised a total of $1B (compare this to the $1.9B raised by AR/VR startups in all of 2016). this was across 16 companies. $673M of this was Series A rounds (in 9 companies)


I'm also interested, could you please share the link to your site?


Link is here: http://newbio.tech/blog.html

Also just submitted to HN


I would love to read your blog post. Thanks in advance.


Link here: http://newbio.tech/blog.html


Thank you.


I’ve done this for several industries now:

Get out of the library and start talking to people in that field. It will take some time and have some slow starts, but the only way you learn about an industries inefficiencies and its opportunities is by hitting the pavement.

You’ll need some explanation “story” to help people understand your intentions. I am upfront and say I am interested in their space personally, and I’m looking for business opportunities - but I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know, and therefore I’m in listening mode.

With your example: Go to the stall owners, and ask if you can talk when they’re not busy. Ask little, listen a lot. Stand there for hours and observe the different stalls. Take notes.

Map out the different players, and ask to talk to them. Eventually you’ll get connected to events that they attend, and they’ll also pass you along to their peers. Ask what conferences they attend and so on.


What is your experience, are people willing to talk for extended time with strangers about their businesses? They will definitely know ballpark numbers about everything, that they might be willing to share.


Yes, most people are definitely willing to talk, IF you show that you value their time, and give them some context about why you're asking.

Show that you value their time by setting the space upfront, and when you're 10 minutes away, tell them "We have 10 minutes left, and I want to respect your time...". They'll decide to keep rambling or not.

Re: numbers, you can also preface with "I'm not looking to know anything confidential, but since I don't know your industry, as we talk, it would be great to have numbers with some context.

Here is my verbatim intro for learning more about cities+construction:

"Hi! I'm a technologist who left the tech world, and I'm focusing on how I can help cities. Particularly helping cities make better decisions with Data.

To prevent building something that doesn't help cities, I'm listening to key people in your space and understanding the problems they face. I'd really like to get an understanding of your role and the issues you face, particularly around the permitting process, and code compliance.

The conversation is less than an hour, and I can meet you in person, or over the phone. The questions are lightweight, no quizzes here. :)"

- nic


In my experience (not the original commenter), people like to talk, especially when the subject is their expertise. Just approach people in a sincere, hearty way.

It is a slow process, but when you're in that "listening mode", you get to hear about their (and their industry's) day-to-day challenges, problems that they encounter, and their current answers to those problems. They might not give you their whole financial records, but the insight you get is far better than what you'd end up with after searching the Internet for an afternoon.


Hang around with the parents of your child's classmates. You always run into them, and they live near you. Smalltalk naturally tends towards what everyone does for a living.


I confirm this actually works surprisingly well.


That only works if your kid is in a very expensive private school, for the 1% right? Most common people have no industry insights, all they know is size of their paycheck and how to avoid getting fired.


How many "common people" do you know? In my experience, many love to complain about all the little inefficiencies at their jobs, company policies that don't make sense in the field but that are officially mandated anyways, waste where the same work has to be done multiple times, departments that are not allowed to directly talk to each other, and so on. Then there is the general awareness of things in their industry (like the size of a German Christmas market business).

Of course this knowledge is not hard to get. You just need to do their job 8 hours a day for half a year or so ... or you could have a quick chat where they get to vent about their job and you learn something new. (You don't even need to have kids for that to work.)


You really aren't giving people enough credit here. You don't have to be at the top of an org to know the nuances of your own job. There are tons of people who work hard and are interested in their job beyond trying to "avoid getting fired." Don't rule people out so easily...literally everyone knows something you don't.


Government's statistics offices - can provide lots of data. Chambers of commerce as well, obvious choice would be trend forecasting companies - though they will charge.

Two of the UK's biggest small business communities are joining forces to create the first data-led business support platform that will give small British firms access to affordable external expertise instantly. - more on the subject here -> https://www.enterprisenation.com/blog/posts/icaew-and-enterp...

To individually check companies revenues per year you can access all the data for the UK companies via https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/ (It's free, you just need to know the name of the company or the company director's name.

Hope it helps.

K


if your industry of interest is technical, one way I've found to get good insights and connections is to write the authors of papers you find interesting and ask to learn more. showing appreciation and respect for their work, as well as letting your genuine interest show through, helps, as does starting a dialogue by providing some info that might be of interest to the author. influential researchers are often networking "hubs" and can often connect you with all sorts of other people in the industry

on the other side of the industry spectrum, my girlfriend made candles as a hobby for a time, and we did market research by walking into random stores and talking to the managers. Was a fun way to spend an afternoon. Interestingly, we found that smoke shop owners were among the most interested customers


If you have a specific industry in mind, attend a trade show or conference about that industry. For you Christmas booth example, you could attend one of the many “gift shop” trade shows.


This sounds like a good idea. What I see as a difficulty is that it might be harder to strike up a conversation or make lasting connections when you are not the normal visitor. "Hi I am here because I am curious" is probably quite unexpected. Would you pose as a potential customer buying goods, or be direct in your curiosity?


Be upfront about your curiosity, otherwise it falls apart pretty quickly if you have a deeper conversation :) What you want to focus on is learning about the space and the players, not pitching them a solution.

I tell people that I am interested in the space, and am in listening mode —> and what do they do? Tell me more....etc etc


When I’ve worked trade shows for my company, I’ve often met visitors who are just exploring the market. Being up front is good. Keeping out of the way is a “real” customer shows up at the booth is appreciated.


First, find a space experiencing accelerating growth. 3D Bioprinting is a perfect example with CAGR of 25%+. It's an earthquake. A tectonic shakeup in the way healthcare is provided. And there will be gargantuan pain points.

Second, compile a master list of all major players. Any publicly available email contacts, social media, phone. Span journalists, researchers, executives. The sector is defined by them.

Third, begin cold emailing. But it must be genuinely personal. And, the absolute key, you must bring value. Don't merely take from someone else's time, hard effort and expertise.

Providing value, while gaining from their sector wisdom, is a form of barter. You must have your own skill set to bring to the table.

For example, there is demand right now for WebGL / Unity3D / VR talent. Next gen user experiences and interfaces. Have a demo ready to show. It doesn't even have to be mind-blowing. Just enough to start the conversation.

Best of luck!


I had a similar goal few years ago and decided to move countries and take up a job in a new industry.

It didn't quite work out for me in that industry at the end but I certainly did meet people outside by bubble + learn about how the industry works in a fairly detailed manner.

This is not the easiest thing to do, but I would highly recommend it if you have the chance!


I use social media. Specifically Twitter. I'm doing a talk about this very same thing later this month. If you ping me on Twitter or email I'll let you know when it gets published.


I'm getting a lot of emails from people interested in the talk and can't possibly remember to let everyone know when it comes out. Please follow me on Twitter and stay posted there. Take the opportunity to create an account there if you don't have one.

Thank you for the support :-)


thanks, done.


To get true industry insights, networking from outside the industry is often insufficient and can potentially lead you down a path of failure and infant mortality.

Yes, by networking you can get people to tell you things, but talk is cheap. People will tell you anything when they have no skin in the game, and you will be tempted to execute one someone's emotional rambles (or multiple persons' correlated rambles, which is even more convincing but no more correct) which they have not thought through all the way. If you're going to build a business, you need higher quality information than that.

Also without the right context in the target industry (or a similar industry), you won't really grasp the underlying nature of the inefficiencies (often a multifaceted quantity), which means there's a high probability you will falter in your execution. You're going be tempted to solve problems that people claim they have, but if you've ever worked in consulting, you will know that the key is not to solve the problem people SAY THEY HAVE, but the problem THEY ACTUALLY HAVE, which is often a different thing. This is consulting 101, and holds true for pretty much any industry.

In order to understand the real problem, you need to be in a position where you have to have had experienced the pain points somewhat first hand.

(The following applies to the more complex industries that I'm familiar with; the Christmas market industry is not as complex and not all of this may be applicable)

1) The most effective way, but not an easy way, is to work in your industry of interest for a year or two in a position that will expose you to data and people in the field. Typically this means data analyst or internal consultant. This way you will get an insider's view and gain street cred (do not underestimate how important this street cred is) if you should decide to build a product to sell to that industry.

[Too often I am approached by enterprise sales people who don't have an appreciation for my industry and try to sell me software to solve for problems they think I have but don't (e.g. anomaly detection? IoT? in my industry, we've been doing that for the past 3 decades under different guises).]

2) If you don't have that luxury, you can work for a consulting company that consults for the industry of interest. That way you will get a cross-organizational view of problems that are common in said industry. This also gains you some street cred, but not as much as (1).

3) The other option, also hard, is to either hire someone from the target industry or have someone who has a track record in said industry mentor you over a period of time. You need that repeated exposure to truly grasp the context. Elon Musk's companies, if I read his biography correctly, tend to take this approach.

If possible, make sure this person has skin in the game in your eventual organization, so this way their goals are aligned with yours. If these conditions apply, then you can apply first-principles thinking, but not before. Quality of information (experience) is paramount. I hate cliches, but be skeptical. Trust but verify.


You know what all those other industries have in common? They all use IT to one degree or another. Go work in one.


I already do that, but if you are in regular employment it vastly limits the number of industries you get in contact with to < 1 / year.


If you're looking for the level of insight that will enable you to arrive at a viable startup idea, you need quality not quantity. Decide on an industry you think will grow fast over the next decade and go learn it in depth. Flitting through networking events and browsing social media is how you arrive at failed startup ideas not viable ones.


Mainman, UPS and Fedex. Are you delivering much of X?




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