You may or may not have heard of the saying “value bomb” so for the uninitiated, it is a golden nugget of information delivered to you by someone in a short period of time [mic drop gesture]
Imagine you are a founder of a startup and you are talking to another founder of a company that is 12 months ahead of you but they are happy to share insights, wisdom & network connections with you. If they bestow upon you a piece of information that would save you from an expensive mistake or a tip to save hundreds of hours of work, then that my friend is a “value bomb” and when founders get together that is exactly what happens. If you are trying to build a startup you want to get as many of these as you can and the best place to find these are founders & co-founders of other companies.
Sure you could watch hundreds of hours of videos from Y-Combinator Startup School to upskill your understanding of the startup journey but often nothing beats talking to someone who has been there and done that.
Last year I spent one week in San Francisco but it felt like three months of progress compared to being in Christchurch. It was value bomb after value bomb networking with other startup founders and other people working in the Web3 space. Unfortunately, the Web3 community in Christchurch is tiny and the startup community has stalled to a standstill.
The MOE Coffee & Jam sessions and Startup Breakfast sessions that use to be a monthly event have all but stopped, there haven’t been any in 2023 and there doesn’t seem to be anything on the radar coming up. It’s understandable if they have run out of funding or staffing resources to host these events because they were very popular free events and to organize a venue, speaker, and sponsors is a time-consuming endeavor.
In the meantime, the next closes thing to a startup meetup is the Later In Life Innovators (LILI) so if you want to network with some people and learn some valuable insights it’s well worth the look. Next month's session is on Marketing and it is being held at BNZ Community 101. It might be hard to say there will be many co-founders there as most of the people over 50 are not trying to build super scalable startups but with age comes wisdom.
Business mentors are another great resource, if you haven’t already got one I’d highly recommend it regardless of what sort of business you have. To get a business mentor it is a one-off fee of only $295+GST and well worth it. The only downside of the business mentor is this is one person and they only have one point of view, it is important to listen to a wide gamut of people to base your decision-making.
Also remember that value bombs can come from anywhere so the more people you talk to the better, some of the best value bombs I have received have come from end users and founders of failed startups. There is a wealth of valuable insight out there, you just need to talk to the right people, ask the right questions and be prepared to listen.
So right now it might be hard to make founder friends in Christchurch with the distinct lack of startup events so you may have to reach out a little more and DM people for a coffee. If you want me to drop some value bombs in your direction feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn.
