{"id":6859,"date":"2022-09-19T16:23:21","date_gmt":"2022-09-19T16:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intch.org\/blog\/?p=6859"},"modified":"2025-03-21T08:53:14","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T08:53:14","slug":"how-to-use-professional-networking-when-building-a-b2b-startup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intch.org\/blog\/how-to-use-professional-networking-when-building-a-b2b-startup\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Use Professional Networking When Building a B2B Startup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi! This’s Yakov, Founder @ Intch<\/p>\n

Before Intch, I co-founded Sailplay \u2014 a Marketing Automation Platform for B2C companies which was recently acquired<\/a>. I shared a part of the story recently here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Sailplay<\/p>\n

Long story short<\/h2>\n

Back in 2013, when we’d just started, we met the same problem as all B2B startups have<\/strong>: an MVP which is still pretty ugly, and yet you need to approach your first potential customers.<\/p>\n

Your value proposition is not 100% clear<\/strong>, you don’t have big name customers<\/strong>, and you don’t have enough cases<\/strong> to prove that your product works.<\/p>\n

That’s why our first acquisition strategy was based on our professional network. This is how we did it:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We specified our target potential clients<\/strong> (food delivery companies, e-commerce, fashion, etc).<\/li>\n
  2. Because we were from the IT industry, we didn’t have enough contacts from these verticals, but we had ex-colleagues, class mates, and so on, who did.<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. So, we simply prepared a brief deck<\/strong> and started to call and message our peers.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"Sailplay<\/p>\n

    Benefits of using your professional network<\/h2>\n

    This approach worked perfectly well because of 3 key points:<\/p>\n