7 Mar
The Downside Of Coming Out Of "Stealth Mode"
My friend Kevin Merritt (CEO of Seattle startup blist) hit the nail on the head with his recent post about the hordes of people who will call you when you announce a financing.
I’ve noticed the same thing since we came out of stealth mode two weeks ago. A lot of people are calling to help us spend the piles of money they assume we have lying around the Napera offices. As Kevin noted, the number one callers at the moment are recruiters. We’ve been lucky at Napera in that we’ve only used a recruiter once and we’ve found social networking sites like LinkedIn have been more effective at finding great people to join our team. So recruiters, real estate brokers, PR agencies and offshore developers please note – we have those bases covered!
I realize companies use all sorts of tactics to generate sales, but let me give those looking to sell Napera something two quick pointers.
#1 Calling me from a boiler room operation on the pretext of a survey, or cold calling my cell number (which I’m guessing you obtained via Jigsaw) is definitely not the best way to win our business.
#2 As much as I dislike email spam, if you are going to send an unsolicited sales pitch, email to info@napera.com is the most effective way for both of us. If we are interested, we’ll respond.
It’s one of those downsides to “making it big”. I know back with my old web hosting company it came to a point where I had to simply let all calls go to voice mail if I didn’t recognize their number just so I could get some work done. But it’s a small price to pay to continue to flourish with and in your company.