Many people ask me how I get access to meeting successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and investors. People seem to automatically assume that without a jumpstart, they’re unable to meet important people. As a result, they put little effort into expanding their network.

I was a 16 year old kid from New York and knew nobody in San Francisco. I decided to fly out and spend a few days there for my winter break. Before coming, I spent several hours emaiing people through linkedin and scheduling casual meets with these prospective connections. I had no valuable connections on linkedin when I began. I went to the search page, found the members who had the most connections, and immediately friended them. By doing this, I instantly had access to 25% of all members on linkedin through 2nd and 3rd degree connections. I found smart individuals I wanted to meet and asked for introductions to them or found their personal email address by searching their name on google. From this alone, I’ve made 15 or so valuable connections.

I finally flew out to San Francisco on my vacation and began to meet with these people I met on linkedin. It was a very manual process, and I had a 50% response rate. For the next few days, I began searching for events on upcoming.org and meetup.com.

I came to realize that people in web 2.0 are very open to meeting and helping others in the field. I emailed the founders at Pairwise.com, Buythislook.com, Zaptix.com, Reddit.com, Justin.tv, etc… and got about an 80% response rate. I took the time to meet with all of them and became good friends with many! In the world of connections, I do agree that the “rich become richer” in that once you have some valuable connections, you’re able to meet others through a simple introduction.

Having spent less than 15 days of my life in San Francisco, I have a nice list of people I can feel comfortable considering my friend. All of this should come to show that ANYBODY without connections to begin with can establish themselves in the valley with just a little bit of effort. I use linkedin to meet new people, but prefer facebook and in-person socialization when it comes to maintaining those connections.*

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