9,000 Conversations Later

Back before I founded Fledge, before even breaking ground on the business plan, I spent my days networking. 15-20 meetings per week. Nearly all at coffee shops at one end of Seattle or another.

You learn a lot of that intensity of networking.

One skill I learned is how to track hundreds of introductions and conversations. Each and every one of the people I met back then were logged in a spreadsheet. No fancy Salesforce database or other CRM, just a simple Excel spreadsheet.

  Name -- Email -- Date -- Notes

Once I figured out that my next startup was Fledge, I took the relevant contacts from that list and started a new spreadsheet, to keep track of everyone I was introduced to, everyone who reached out through the web site, every investor, everyone I spoke with on a panel, etc., etc., etc.

It’s an amazing resource, as five years later, I can’t remember everyone I’ve met, but in 10 seconds I can tell you if I met someone and if so, when and where we first met. More often than not, that is enough context to then remember the person and the conversation we had.

Five years later, the list just topped 9,000 people!

That is a whole lot of people. And crazily, if you do the math, it’s still about new 5 people per day, not too much faster than when I was networking in coffee shops.

If you are one of those 9,000 people, thank you for what you do. And if you’d like to get on the list, fill out my contact form, (briefly) tell me what you do, and how I might help. How I help is outlined in my bio.

[Image by Flickr]

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