Last Thursday, I was invited to give a presentation about “why to start up?” to an audience of around 100 students from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). It was a great opportunity to try to share my passion for startups and entrepreneurship… I hope I’ve succeeded to motivate these young graduates to consider startups as a viable career option (of course, all these guys and gals were already interested by entrepreneurship – otherwise, they wouldn’t have been there!).
There were also some entrepreneurs in the room, who told me that the presentation was really complete (honored by such a feedback!). Except that I’ve forgotten to talk about one important point required to start up. The network component (THX to Maximilian for this comment!). For a networker as I am… what a shame ;-)! Or maybe it’s because I’ve internalized it so deeply that I didn’t noticed it was not necessary natural for every one ;-)?
So basically, regarding networking… you need to invest in your network right now. Help others. Bring value. Don’t think that people are there to help you. You have to give to receive back, once, possibly. I’ve already blogged about the pay it forward culture and think that we should teach people how to effectively network from their youngest age (why isn’t there any lessons in college about networking, WHY?).
I’m interested in any feedback (from those who attended the event and anyone reading this post!), so don’t hesitate to comment this post!