Growing My Social Capital

It's Who You Know, Not What You Know

Entrepreneurs can reap profound benefits from their social capital. If you know how social capital works, then you can build it!

This is a 'networking' experience -- but unlike other 'networking' opportunities you may have had in the past, I'm going to set very clear parameters on this experience. This will help you focus your efforts on achieving exactly what you need for this experience; moreover, you can set parameters on any future networking experience, to get the most out of it.

Mission: establish contact with three new people, who will be valuable to helping you pursue your business idea...

One person must be a domain expert in your industry. This would be someone who's engaged in the same type of business activity as you would like to be. They may own the same kind of company that you would like to own, or they may be a technical expert who knows a lot about the kind of product or service that you would like to produce.

1) "The Olive Guy" from the Gainesville Farmer's Market

2) He would be the domain expert in my industry; he is a phd in hydroponic technology and owns his own education program for sustainable agricultural technology- he also sells homemade olives at the farmer's market 

3) I found the Olive Guy at the Gainesville farmer's market where I go every week for my groceries. This time last year when I was working on this project, I established contact with him and requested some feedback on my sustainable development ideas for Gainesville. 

4) This exchange was an informal interview where he talked to me about the costs and benefits of starting a business centered on sustainable development ideas. There was no exchange other than information and good, interesting conversation!

5) He was very realistic about the important factors of entrepreneurship in this field and, as a highly educated, yet down to earth individual with plenty of exposure in sustainable technology, could act as a great mentor for my endeavors. 

One person must be an expert on your market. This would be someone who is targeting your market with similar products services -- or knows a lot about conducting customer research in your area -- or represents a major piece of your market (this might be most applicable with B2B markets).
1) Directors of Cymplify

2) These guys are Market experts (without knowing how useful they are to me) 

3) Cymplify is a new cafe here in Gainesville centered on sustainability as well, but are angled in a slightly different direction than are my business ideas 

4) This was another informal interview conducted at Cymplify; I asked them to talk to me a little bit about their journey to creating the cafe, and specifically how they discovered their market and how their market turned out differently than they might have expected in the creation process. I went about it in a very informal manner as a curious customer, and mentioned that I had my own sustainability ideas but 

5) Including these people in my network is a questionable move as it could go one of two ways; we could either become competition (which I think would be the more likely case) or we could work to complement each other in the sustainability/"green" movement here in Gainesville. Regardless, observing their business and keeping them more familiar is a better option, as they are a fantastic source of information relating to a market that is still growing. 

One person must be an important supplier to your industry. This would be someone who is selling products and services to other organizations/firms in your industry. 1) Gainesville local farmers; my main contact would be the organizers of the Alachua County Farmer's Market because my cafe would be built on the objective that 

2) They would be the supplier/main contact for all of the food products that we would be using/selling

3) I knew about the Alachua County Farmer's Market since I moved to Gainesville because that is where I get the majority of my produce; to contact the board who organizes the farmer's market activities, I had to go online to find the contact information and emailed them with my questions. 

4) The exchange was over email and was only an informative conversation about the possibilities of supplying a restaurant with the produce that moves through the farmer's market. They offered to be a contact to make recommendations as to who I should contact, but recommended that I make direct contact with the farmers themselves to see if we can make business arrangements that way. 

5) Keeping the Gainesville Farmer's Market as a contact is very valuable as they have all of the information on the local agricultural and artisanal markets in the local area. 

Finally: Reflect. This experience requires you to do a little 'targeted networking.' How will this experience shape how you participate in any future networking events? Did this experience differ from your networking experiences in the past? How?

This experience made me really think harder about who I would contact and being prepared to talk to them about what exactly I needed from them. The worst thing is going to meet someone or going to get information from people and not being prepared to answer the questions: what is my goal, what do I need from you, what would it cost you, how would it benefit you? I would say this is the first tier of my networking process, and the next step would be going one step deeper and going to talk to the contacts that I gained through this activity.