Social Capital (20A)

Who: Rodrigo, Network consultant for Raytheon

Slot: Domain Expert: Fills the spot as he is someone that is working with networking components. He works for Raytheon but is an independent contractor also involved in multiple technologies, mainly with industrial computer and networking components. His specialty is in wireless technologies for industrial uses, such as machinery.

Description: I found this person from a friend who has a connection with him through a job they had with AT&T together. Was able to get his contact information an email him, eventually spoke with him.

Nature of Exchange: I explained to him my business idea, and he gave me feedback on the network concepts of how having a product like this would work.

Ability to exploit an opportunity: I believe he can help me if there were any opportunities with wireless technologies as far as the implementation to make the technology work in any environment. 

Who: Darren, Sales Director for VMware

Slot: Market Expert: He fills this slot as he has been involved in the sales but also innovation side of technology products for a long time. He’s worked with a lot of analysts that give him data about consumers that would be interested in products, and also has relationships with the people who use the products.

Description: My brother met him as a lead role in a project team he was working on using VMware products. I got to send him some emails after asking my brother if he knew anyone.

Nature of exchange: I told him about my idea, and he explained about the capabilities of 5G technologies he is working on with some other companies in collaboration with VMWare. One of them including wireless charging on tech devices without the need of any peripherals. It would literally just begin charging devices if it received a 5G connection.

Ability: He would definitely help me in being able to find a demograpphic of consumers that would be interested in the product, and in particular potential enterprise customers.

Who: Ryan, Lambda Labs Engineer

Slot: Supplier: He works with a team that makes deep learning workstations, servers, laptops, and cloud workstations. His team makes them for various big companies.

Description: Made this connection at work as our team was wanting to buy a GPU server off of them, or at least wanted a quote from them. Then I just asked him if he would be willing to hear out my business plan afterwards through email.

Nature of Exchange: I explained to him my business idea, and he talked about the various steps of how to get this product out into the market. His focus was on enterprise, but he gave me ideas on how I would be able to get this product on the market, and what potential suppliers I would need in order to do this. He also talked about the relationships you want to develop with suppliers, in his case computer hardware suppliers, and how deals can arise after a long enough time developing those relationships.

Ability: He would help me in being able to develop an effective supply chain and how I would be able to develop relationships with my suppliers.

Reflection: I would say it shaped me in being able to be a little more forward and confident in asking people for feedback and questions. A lot of people are willing to help, I just need to do more asking and develop those connections. I wouldn’t say it’s differed other than I tried targeting a more direct audience which helped because I was more comfortable being in my element in talking about technology. Overall though the methods to developing a network has been the same for me in just being intentional but also giving something back and not letting it be a one-way relationship. Other than forming the initial connection (which is my problem), I really do want to form meaningful relationships that go past “business,” or just getting something out of them.