Who in your community do you dream of having as a mentor? Are they a successful entrepreneur, a serial angel investor, an experienced professor, or a respected service provider to entrepreneurs? You’re likely on the right track to a great speaker if you respect their work deeply and think of it as inspiration for some of the things you do, you already have a series of questions you wish you could ask them, and you might even somewhat nervous about contacting them. Chances are, the rest of your community would also benefit from his or her experience.
Think of finding and interviewing the speakers for Startup Grind as planning a 1 on 100 mentorship session.
Based on tracking attendance and feedback from thousands of events, the Startup Grind team has found the key to running powerful events and growing your community comes down to one thing the director can do better than anyone else: host the best speakers.
When looking through your list of speakers, ask yourself:
1. Does he or she have the experience and energy to inspire and educate a room full of entrepreneurs? Yes means the event will be very valuable!
2. Does his or her personal and company brand create enough excitement to fill the room? Yes means the event will be well-attended!
Asking these questions ahead of your first few events is especially important. Who do you want your chapter to be affiliated with - the best entrepreneurs in your area, or anything less?
Research Your Speaker
You already know of some of the most important entrepreneurs in your area by name and company. In doing your research get to know their story and what's important to. If they've invested in companies get to know their investment thesis by studying their CrunchBase or Angel List profiles. Be sure to review their writing on their blogs or in publications or past interviews in which they were the guest.
Review their LinkedIn profiles to see what background they come from: academic, corporate, family business, etc. See what content they're sharing on their Facebook and Twitter pages to know what they have been thinking and learning about lately. These topics make for great points of discussion. Finally, their public Instagram profiles may give a good insight into how they spend their free time or what hobbies they enjoy. For really hard to get VIPs, sending a gift or book inspired by the speaker's Instagram and Twitter profiles is a sneaky but smart way to get a speaker's attention.
Warm Introductions
Startup Grind directors are connectors - not because they know absolutely everyone, but they create meaningful, helpful friendships with the intent of bringing the most value to their communities. The best connectors build relationships of people around those they would most like to host. When reaching out to an influential individual, a referral from such a second or third degree connection with whom you have build a friendship will be exponentially more powerful than a cold email.
Your Facebook, LikedIn, or Gmail will have leads to the people you would most like to invite. To check your closest connections to a potential speaker, try using Conspire app [https://www.conspire.com] to examine the bonds between yourself and your intended speaker. The best directors are those that are not only inviting the most influential speakers, but nurturing the connections that will lead to even more inspiring mentors like Richard Branson, Biz Stone, or Jack Ma.
Leverage Past Speakers
Being featured as a guest on Startup Grind means joining the likes of Clayton Christensen (Innovators Dilemma), Scott Cook (Intuit), Jessica Livingston (Y Combinator), Ben Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz), MC Hammer, and Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn). Startup Grind is known for making the world’s most influential mentors available to all, and we believe your community also deserves the best of your city.
To really interest busy CEOs and investors, directors are sure to mention some of these influential names in the outreach they do to their intended speakers. They mention the videos will be recorded and made available online for the whole world to view alongside other thought leaders. They build credibility around themselves, their chapter, and their community through the Startup Grind brand, and in so doing attract experienced leaders.
Emphasize Community Impact
For successful entrepreneurs and investors think that the money will not be effective. Instead they want to be seen as community leaders and mentors. Being part of Startup Grind is a great way to bring everything they've learned to the local and online communities, and offers them a chance to promote the companies in which they have invested. When reaching out your intended guest understand the important to them, and tailor your email.
Pick Speakers Strategically
For the first event, successful Startup Grinds invite a first guest with a very large network, rather than the top entrepreneur investor in the area. This has the effect of attracting a lot of people to your event from your guest's network and may make bringing on more influential guests easier in the future. During each few months, try to invite at least one major “get” - someone the whole community would dream of hearing from. These references might come from other directors who make a note that one of their past guests is coming to your city, or from VIPs who generally take months to convince. Keeping these potential guests engaged and informed of the community you’re building is important to finally be able to appear on their calendar.
How to Reach Your Speaker
Connecting with your target on Twitter, in person, and through an introduction are all very powerful. Most common, however, is still a great email. Here are some of the best collected from the Startup Grind global community: https://basecamp.com/1807504/projects/3660434/messages/16825559
One of the most effective templates Startup Grind directors have used to acquire speakers with 80% success rates is this one:
My name is [NAME], I am the Startup Grind Chapter Director for [CITY]. Startup Grind is an educational event series for founders hosted in 160 cities around the world. Startup Grind is powered by Google for Entrepreneurs.
We have interviewed people like Jessica Livingston (YC), Vinod Khosla (Sun Microsystems), Bill Maris (Google Ventures), Bing Gordon (Kliener Perkins), Ann Muira Ko (FLOODGATE), Ben Silbermann (Pinterest), David Lee (SV Angel), Steve Blank.
I would be honored to interview you for an hour with a room full of entrepreneurs. Is there a night in [MONTH] or [MONTH] that works for you?
WHAT IS STATUP GRIND?
Startup Grind hosts monthly fireside chat events in 175 cities around the world with great investors and entrepreneurs. We film the events and put them online for entrepreneurs to learn from.
WHAT?
I would be honored to have you for an hour in [CITY] on a week night in the second half of [MONTH] or [MONTH].
PREPARATION?
No prep needed. Just show up and I'll do the interview and have [BEST ESTIMATE] entrepreneurs in the room.
What do you think? Can you spare an hour?
Thanks so much,
[FIRST NAME]
How to Host a Rock Star
If you’ve always wanted to have a conversation with Richard Branson or Elon Musk in person, you wouldn’t be the only one. If you’ve been dedicated to keeping in touch with each of them over months, tracking their travels, and know their team members by name, you might be Marian - the London director of Startup Grind. Marian’s commitment to himself when founding the London chapter was simple: host only the best. This has made the London chapter one of the finest in the world, consistently attracting huge crowds and producing some of the most-watched footage for the Startup Grind YouTube channel. Marian has found that over 60% of his attendees come to see the speaker, and only a minority attendees look for networking alone. If you want to supercharge your chapter, the way is clear: get amazing speakers. Build a Top 10 List of people you’d like to host who occasionally visit your city (or poll your audience!), and let Marian break down his best strategies for getting them to join your community in this video:
VIDEO: Marian, London Director on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyPE8gfXdsU
Marian talks about these high-level strategies:
Belong in places and at events where your speakers feel at home, such as conferences and high-level parties. You’ll actually be able to have a short conversation with them there and make the invitation as a peer rather than as another admirer.
Use second-level introductions whenever possible, especially from connections who are as equally high-level as your speaker. Asking a successful past speaker for an introduction to your target will open doors that absolutely beats reaching out to your target’s public relations committee with a cold email. Of course, you can and should try both!
Use your key connectors from friends and business partners in the press, from your educational background, and your past employers. Your social media profiles will reveal connections to even the hardest-to-reach guests. In asking for an introduction from friends and partners, always make it a win-win by inviting your introducer to the event for free if you’re able to secure the guest and giving them a chance to mingle with your speaker. Additionally, you might want to write the request in a way that allows the introducer to have an elegant way to say “not right now,” but leave the door open to return to the conversation after your next event.
Position the invitation to the speaker’s unique interests. Did you know Richard Branson loves setting Guinness World Records? Marian learned this about his target and is using it as a unique angle to attract Richard to London Startup Grind. Clayton Christensen, the academic and philosopher behind The Innovator’s Dilemma, was attracted to speak at Startup Grind Global 2014 by his interviewee: a long-time reader, Mark Suster, of a well-known venture capitalist and writer at Both Sides of the Table. Dave McClure of 500 Startups was charmed into becoming with a Startup Grind speaker with a unique Dave offering: 500 cookies, freshly delivered to their California offices. The moral of the story: giving back to the community might warm your speakers’ heart, but deeply understanding them and offering them an experience they have long been searching for is the surest way to grab their attention and inspire action.
Be a superconnector, introducing your most influential speakers to one another. You’ll gain their respect for adding a valuable new mentor to their networks, and also create a desire to create reciprocity - like an introduction of a speaker you’ve always wanted to host. Organizing an annual dinner for them is another wonderful way to create meaningful connections and keep yourself closer to the top of their minds in case some inspiration comes into their minds.