Techstars is an amazing network of over 3,000 entrepreneurs, mentors and investors. Being part of the network is a lifelong benefit for the companies we fund. One of the most important (but often undervalued) assets a startup needs to create is a strong and supportive network around itself.
For me personally, making connections among people that can help each other is a big part of what I do. I want to put the right people together at the right times so that all of the companies I’m involved in can do incredible things.
Professional networks like LinkedIn don’t help me do this. They’re inaccurate because they don’t understand the difference between someone I met briefly at a cocktail party and someone I’ve worked with for 10 years. And they force me to manually send and accept connection requests in order to keep up with changes to my network. At the end of the day, they don’t actually understand my network or anyone else’s.
What I want a professional network to do is help me navigate my network and find the best ways to connect people. Conspire, a company we’re investors, does this well. Based on email communication patterns, it understands the strength of relationship between me and each of my contacts, along with the strengths of millions of other relationships. The result is a professional network that finds the strongest path of connections between me and any person or company.
When I need to reach out to someone, Conspire finds the best person in my personal network to make an introduction. But, more importantly, it helps my extended network know when I can help them with an introduction, or when someone else in their network is in a better position. Always knowing who to ask for help is powerful.
Conspire’s network has grown to reach more than 37 million people already. Historically, it has only been available to Gmail users. But today they are opening up access to anyone with an email account that supports the common IMAP protocol, so it now works with Outlook, Exchange, etc as well. I’m excited to see the network grow and become an even better resource for me and everyone else.
