The Power of Networking: An Interview with Adam Saven
By Patrick Casey
Originally posted April 25, 2018
Adam Saven is no stranger to networking.
When Adam founded PeopleGrove, a mentoring and advising platform for students and professionals, he found many ways to put his relationship-building savvy to work.
Adam’s approach to networking has fueled PeopleGrove’s success at every stage and in a wide variety of ways — from early product pivots, to fundraising, to customer success.
In this interview, Adam tells his story and shares some practical tips for founders and job seekers.
What led you to found PeopleGrove?
I grew up in San Diego and went to college at UPenn. Like many other UPenn students, I started my career at an investment bank.
I quickly learned that I didn’t want to stay in that profession, so I set a goal to meet a new UPenn graduate every week to explore career options.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this kicked off my path to PeopleGrove.
I met a product manager at Tumblr who advised me to start writing a blog to explore and showcase my interest in tech. I took the advice, and eventually, my blog gave me a vehicle to apply to a position at Google.
To go from investment banking to Google is a bit like being dropped off at summer camp. It’s a surreal experience. At Google, I had far more free time and was surrounded by people who were very open to exploring new concepts.
Reilly Davis — who had moved with me from banking to Google — and I decided to use our newfound nights and weekends to build a company. Our original idea was essentially “Tinder for jobs,” and we named the company Emjoyment. By mid-2014, we had left Google to work on it full-time.
We made the classic mistake of not validating our idea with either side of the market. Instead, we built an entire product based on what we thought people would love. Once we began listening to our users, we realized that we had been solving the wrong problem.
For students and young professionals, it isn’t hard to apply to jobs — that only requires a few hours and a computer. What is very hard — and very valuable — for them is accessing the social capital they need to kickstart their careers.
At that point, we decided to scrap everything and change our entire approach.
That’s how we came to launch PeopleGrove.
Through a series of introductions, we met a team at Stanford. We pitched to them while still building our product, and we heavily incorporated their feedback. Stanford became our first customer.
Having Stanford as a customer gave us a chance to gather great customer feedback. It also gave us credibility with other universities. Even more importantly, though, when the team at Stanford saw us deliver, they became willing to open their network to us. The Stanford team introduced us to Intuit, which became our second customer. From the beginning, customer referrals like this have fueled our growth.
Do you have any advice for founders who are trying to create new business relationships?
A huge percentage of the opportunities that I’ve been fortunate enough to realize grew out of cold emails. Many of our most important relationships started that way. It’s how we met our first investor and many of our early partners.
These emails have converted well because when I write them, I always think very carefully about how I can create value for that person.
For example, I knew that a particular EdTech fund was very interested in the mentoring space. Rather than just pitch PeopleGrove, I started the conversation by sharing themes that we’d learned about the space.
Another truism for successful cold outreach is that you need to be willing to stand out. For example, I embrace the story about our early struggles at Emjoyment.
It’s also very important to do your research before reaching out.
When we were preparing to raise our first round, I started my research by creating a list of the top EdTech investors. The research should go beyond that, though — for example, I would look for shared interests or connections.
My goal was to keep people reading until the second sentence. And then the next sentence, and then the one after that. I spent a lot of time thinking about the cues that would make specific investors care about what I had to say. I’d also use social proof by telling the investors that Stanford was our first customer and that we were ex-Googlers.
As your network grows, you learn more about a space, and you gain confidence, you can build very strong momentum with these messages.
Even more importantly, though, as you begin to build good rapport and demonstrate honesty, people become very willing — even eager — to open their networks to you. This is ultimately how we met many of our seed investors.
For this to work, though, you need to make people feel confident in offering you their social capital. That’s why it’s so important to follow up with the people who give you introductions. Tell them how it helped you — that’s addictive and will make them want to help more.
Any type of outreach — and especially cold outreach — can be difficult. Do you have any tips for founders on how to break through the noise?
The reality is that we’re all confronted with an incredible amount of noise every day.
That can sometimes leave founders with a difficult decision — “Should I break through by sheer quantity of outreach, or should I take a more focused approach?”
For issues that are extremely high impact — like fundraising, hiring, and working with key customers — I gravitate toward doings that don’t scale.
Right now, we’re hiring for our first marketing position. Many companies would hire a recruiter to find candidates. My approach, though, has been to go on LinkedIn, find about 20 candidates who I think might make for an excellent fit, and then send each of them a very tailored message. The response rate to these messages has been very high.
As a founder, you have limited time, so you can’t take this approach with everything. For the highest-ROI issues, though, I think it’s crucial to stay that heavily involved.
Originally published at launchcapital.com.
