Every day I’m lucky enough to get to meet with entrepreneurs and look for ways to help. Occasionally, there’s no clear way to be helpful but most of the time there are one or two things — an intro here, a lesson learned there — that can be really useful. Here are some of the most common ways to help an entrepreneur:
- Customer Discovery Concepts – Most entrepreneurs have never heard of customer discovery and the idea of getting deep customer input before even building a product. Start with the basics and see where they are on the learning curve.
- Available Meetups – Entrepreneurs crave community. Share the local meetups on SaaS, IoT, big data, health IT, or whatever the area of focus.
- Specific Blogs and Books – Share your favorite blogs and books. Entrepreneurs don’t know what they don’t know and the best ones are learning machines.
- Prospect Intro – Nothing really happens until something is sold. If you know someone that might be a prospect for the entrepreneur, make the intro.
- Partner Intro – Most businesses need partners that supply a certain solution, resell the product, or connect an important element of the ecosystem. Connect an entrepreneur with a partner and pay it forward.
- Potential Employee Intro – One great team member can truly transform a startup. Think of the people in your network and refer a potential employee.
Helping an entrepreneur is incredibly rewarding. Entrepreneurship is so difficult and messy that help along the way makes a huge impact.
What are you doing today? Reach out and see if you can help an entrepreneur.
David Cummings on Startups 
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