Why You Need to Come Up for Air Now and Then
Written by Paul Proffitt@SDRDorg
You’re an entrepreneur. You read CrunchBase, Mashable, Tech-blahty bahdy blah. You’re busy working on your idea and have your head down for months trying to get your MVP out there into market. You’re still connected to what is going on. You get the SunDown RunDown weekly newsletter, you get the Startup Digests, you know what’s happening locally in the startup scene. You’re good, you’re fine. Keep working away. You know that automatic whale juicer is still on point for your target market. But wait… or is it?
One of the things that I learned the hard way is that you still have to be tapped into the entrepreneurial community in a real way. Getting out there to networking events, business pitch events, and other places where entrepreneurs congregate is important to your survival and your sanity. Markets change quickly and being out of touch for months at a time can put your start-up at a serious strategic disadvantage. New people come in the entrepreneurial ecosystem all of the time, someone who might be able to point you to another customer or another strategic partner would otherwise be missed. You never know a missed opportunity until it is generally way too late.
When working on your business you budget time to meet with potential customers, meet with your team, work on your actual projects to get your company off the ground – why don’t you budget time for getting out there and networking with those in the industry? Talking about your idea, getting feedback, feeling out the market are all things that will make your eventual pitch that much better.
You will have a chance to experiment in the real world without having to feel the stabbing pain of an investor or customer saying, “No,” because you missed one critical question that you never asked yourself, but someone at a networking event did.
Just get out there and put your idea to the test.
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