Last summer I got feedback from 30-40 of the brightest minds in tech. Here is how I did it. 🤯

Asking for help is a superpower “I've never found anybody that didn't want to help me if I asked them for help. I have never found anyone who said no, or hung up the phone. I just ask. Most people never pick up the phone and call. And that is what separates the people who do things, versus the people who just dream about them. You have to act.” - Steve Jobs Last summer in July of 2023. I reached out to 30-40 people from all around the world to help me get feedback on my investment pitch deck and product-positioning of my startup. I talked to VPs at Instagram. Design directors at Google. Microsoft. Palantir. Stripe. Coinbase. Evernote. Facebook. You name it. The result? Over 30 days my pitch deck went from early draft. to responses like: "Wow this is the best pitch-deck I have ever seen", from higher-up people who have seen it all. - 🗓️ One month of feedback. Start by mapping out candidates, Go for variety and put it in a spreadsheet, also map out their potential expertise which you can intersect with your questions. You want to be structured when you talk to a lot of people. GO for prominent companies. Google, Coinbase, Apple, Microsoft, Stripe, etc. But also go for up-and-coming famous startups. - 🤔 But why? The reason you want to talk to higher-ups at these companies is that they are very good and pushing some agenda, pitching product direction, or new initiative. So they will be perfectly positioned to help you steer your initiative. The art of getting feedback is to not listen to everything, but cherry-pick the stuff that repeats, makes the most sense and stuff that's is just obvious no-brainers. And be open to getting feedback from unusual suspects, people a bit different from yourself. The people I predicted would have the biggest impact on me, turned out to be alright, but the top 3% people that influenced me the most came from people that surprised me. I guess we all have predefined biases that needs a reality check sometimes 😸 A good sample list is key here I think. Can't have the 20% without the 80% etc. - ☎️ Then reach out DM (linkedin) with 3 things you want feedback on, adjust what these are based on who you talk to and what you need help with (your product). VP of product, VP of business, VP of marketing, CTO, VP of design, tailor your question to role, experience, but also add a "non-square-peg" to the rooster of questions, odd-ball questions can sometimes break open really interesting insights and pathways in your conversation, also it's a "mindvirus". Just be sure to frame the question as a bit out of the norm so that the advisor doesn't get annoyed or if he/she doesn't really have the insight can at least do best effort) - 😅 Reaching out to people you are a bit afraid to reach out to. Maybe not Elon Musk or Bill Gates straight away. But somewhere in between your peers and one level below Musk is fine. Provided you have the leverage to do so. Anyone off the street won't intersect with the people you need to get feedback from. Leverage comes in many shapes and forms it also usually involves timing, so you want to reach out at the most relevant time in your journey, usually right after some big milestone has been achieved and your about to embark on the next one but you want some compass tuning. Like: You just launched a product that resonates with the times, or you just raised money, you're on a mission to change the world, and you actually might pull it off 🚀. Or you have a great team or a very impressive pitch deck of an interesting non-generic idea. Or you're just an interesting weird non-conform outlier that people could find interesting. Guilty 😅 - 🏝️ You are not an island. The most productive people in this world are often very self-sufficient. Which is an oxymoron because the knee-jerk reaction is always to do it your self, so reaching out is hard for the very same people that change the world. So you need to short-circuit your brain. Drop all common sense. Make the call. You will 10x your self if you can have both these mindsets in your head at the same time. Self-sufficient and a magnet for getting external help. - Here are some examples of how to structure outreach DM's. 1. Describe what your product does in one sentence. 2. Make 3 questions (discussion points) related to your product that intersect with the advisor's area of expertise. 3. Include what your core challenge is for your product today. And how the advisor might be able to give you advice so you can unlock the next level. 4. Include the last big milestone you accomplished. 5. Include what your next big milestone is. The more structured you are the better the success rate you will have booking amazing people to give you feedback. Use Calendly so they can pick a time that fits for them. Go for 30-minute slots on Google Meet or Zoom. Be generous with time-range. As great people are everywhere from LA to Japan to Australia. Sometimes you will have to do calls 6AM or 2AM. Adjust your schedule not theirs. Book 3 calls per day for 30 days. And you will end up with around 30-40 calls. Because usually VPs or important people have to change/cancel bookings. It's a part of the game. This will be fun, and the best part is, you can go about your daily schedule in between calls, and execute on all that great feedback and help your getting. Tailored nuggets like this are often very fresh, without execution it just blows away with the wind. Now. Go forth and start booking amazing people to help you 💪. Be structured. Use google sheets for all the mapping required and use GPT to tailor the outreach DM's to each candidate, reuse things about your product and questions you would want to know more about. If done right you should aim for a positive return rate of 30-40% for your outreach. It all depends on your leverage and how interesting it seems to help you. So make the outreach text interesting! The only trade should be interesting minds meeting for 30 minutes and together maybe denting the world just a little bit in the right direction. 🌎