Adam Benzion

Adam Benzion built and sold two companies one after the other by bootstrapping both, after wasting over a decade at a cubicle.

He taught myself how to plan, build, grow and exit each company, while creating lasting value to individual users and mega corporations alike.

Expert session

Tactic that has had the biggest impact on Adam’s success

Through partner marketing and leveraging partner’s network to expand reach

Result if you follow the steps in Adam’s session

The hook. Have partners to agree to integrate you into their offering and grow your user base.

Full session with video, notes, audio and discussion inside EHQ Club. Learn more

Expert session snapshot

Transcript

So when you actually interact very authentically, by the way, people kind of know who you are already and they give you some break. So we’ve done this kind of like read who they are, reach out to them often.

We also would shop to meetups, Ben and myself will just show up to meetups meet with people. Ben and I met in this amazing meetup in San Jose. I think that five people that meant to be, that could become later entrepreneurs and business partners of like, the CEO of particle as actual pilot, we ended up you know, meetup and he became a friend of ours and a great business partner.

So we would show up, we will hack systems, will hack meetups, hack LinkedIns then hack press releases and talk to people. And I’ve noticed that in the beginning, little depressing, it took up to 18 months of a sale cycle to get something, somebody finally agreed to take a bet on us.

And another thing that I’ve noticed is this so I’ve met another guy, again, no names for privacy. Let’s just say James. And I met James at another meetup in Seattle. And then we stayed in touch.

Eventually, James got a job at Intel. And he will tell people about us at Intel that he met his startup and we should probably work with him. And Intel said, yes, maybe we would, maybe we won’t.

And then eventually, Intel took a bite and actually did some work with us on this hackathon. It was really great. And then this fellow ended up in a meeting at Microsoft, where Microsoft was debating which company like Hackster to work with, but leading towards one of our competitors.

And here’s a guy who I met at a meetup, who is working for another company for Intel, is telling people at Microsoft, why they should pick us instead of the other partner. And I heard this on the Mac, there was some guy kept telling us, that you have a better technology, a better vision, the team is actually going fast, is going to be better. And then we actually won the maxim business and ever since it’s been one of our most amazing partnerships.

So understanding, have patience, understand where to find your leads, again, through press releases, the right job titles. Don’t go too high when you’re young, because no one speak to you. Plus, I think VP types get spammed a lot. And they just really have to become the best person in the company, you have to have a lot of filters and focus.

So think about a sweet spot of people that actually execute and are more open and can take more bets and have flexible budgets as well. So that’s what we’ve learned. And that’s how we established all these relationships.

And another thing I just want to add that I remember, I told Ben, my business partner, I said to him, “No, Ben, all these things that we’re doing right now, you just have to trust that it’s going to take months and months before anything’s going to happen”.

And one of the reasons we made it because we had a really good partnership and he was like, I totally get it. And I remember we had this desert walk six months before single person said yes, in was actually Autodesk they wrote us our first check for nothing.

It was like a being $1,000 or something, that was our first customer. And they just took a bet on us, you know, and then Microsoft came and Intel came and everybody else, but it took us again, six months of trying and telling and sharing. It really worked up.