The Swarm

Venture capital is evolving, with network ops at its core. 🐝 In The Swarm's latest webinar, David Connors had the pleasure of discussing this topic with Cory Bolotsky from VC Platform Global Community and Keshvi Radia from Balderton Capital. 💬 They highlighted the importance of focusing new programs and prioritizing your goals, leveraging existing technology when possible, and focusing on both quantitative and qualitative measures of success. 🎯 They also emphasized how deeper cultural shifts are important to consider prior to rolling out a program or new technology. 💡 And much more: Check out the recap at https://lnkd.in/gTYZwDJK and replay at https://lnkd.in/gndkPmkG #VC #NetworkOperations #Innovation

🍯 If we look at a beehive, we see bees know something about organizing their relationships. These collectively form a network that gets things done. 🤝 We can draw a quick parallel to the world of VC, which is super relationship-based to accomplish big missions: connecting humans, making intros, backing companies, and supporting founders. What tools can they carefully integrate? 5️⃣ In this spirit, I am sharing 5 tips from 3 experts I heard yesterday discussing 'How to Level Up Your VC Network'. Take it from the pros: Cory Bolotsky of VC Platform Global Community, Keshvi Radia, Product at Balderton Capital & David Connors at the aptly-named The Swarm. Thanks for the quick inspo! ✍️ Read my latest on Medium to consider how you can also experiment: https://lnkd.in/ebzF22Un cc: Marieke Gehres, Jay Anna Harris-Theis, Rylee Mora & more. #VC #Network #Relationships #Founders #Startups

It's happening in less than an hour! 🔥 Join live or register to get the recording: https://lnkd.in/gBQWgDqa - Set up your team, goals, and KPIs for your VC network - Leverage technology to map and organize your relationships in a more complete and usable way - Align on how to search and engage relevant people in your network - Enable and keep track of introductions among your team and portfolio companies - Enrich and keep your contact and company data clean and up-to-date

From Sequoia Capital to The Swarm: David Connors Launches Large https://lnkd.in/gU24iN7R

Calling all VC platform and ops teams to join this discussion next week! https://lnkd.in/g5ajWn3f Over the past two decades, platform roles have increased at a higher rate than VC industry growth as a whole. And according to VC Platform Global Community, a higher concentration of platform roles is correlated to outsized returns in up and down market conditions (see https://lnkd.in/gWRKK38P). In this webinar, we’ll explore how to adopt a structured approach to network operations for VC firms. You’ll learn actionable and effective practices with industry experts and VC trailblazers who’ve done it before! - Set up your team, goals, and KPIs for your VC network - Leverage technology to map and organize your relationships in a more complete and usable way - Align on how to search and engage relevant people in your network - Enable and keep track of introductions among your team and portfolio companies - Enrich and keep your contact and company data clean and up-to-date.

We're rolling out a new product, here's how my team setup meetings with our ICP target accounts this week... 1. Used Hexact to scrape lists of G2 companies in the exact categories we were targeting, and then used ChatGPT to clean up/improve. Learning: we initially tried Clay but didn't yield quality results, way too noisy for what we needed. 2. Imported 309 target accounts into The Swarm to find warm intro paths. - 124 we had relationships - 185 we didn't Learning: an 'indirect' intro path still converts higher than direct cold outbound (eg. sending to a colleague of your prospect where there's an existing relationship). 3. Setup warm intros using The Swarm - Batched the 124 companies into requests for each relationship holder (these are our investors, advisors, partners etc). - Each person got 3-5 names to review, they told us who they could make intros to, and then received a forwardable note for each intro request. Learning: make it easy for your supporters, batch requests and do the heavy lifting of sending separate forwardable notes for each intro. 4. Setup cold outbound using lemlist for 185 where we didn't have warm intros - Linkedin connect with opening hook focused on burning pain point, once connected send educational message, if no connect then 2-touch email campaign. Learning: Linkedin inbox is great for quickly chatting with a prospect, important to jump in when they're online and paying attention. 5. Results: so far warm intros are converting to meetings at a higher pace (surprise surprise). But cold outbound isn't dead, it's just evolving.

At The Swarm we're helping thousands of founders, salespeople and investors adopt the 'Go-To-Network Playbook'... 🗺️ Phase 1: Mapping Company Relationships ↳ Start by mapping the networks of your team, investors, advisors, partners, customers (and more). ↳ Calculate a connection strength score for everyone in your extended network to carve out the actual relationships you can lean on. 🎯 Phase 2: Target Account List ↳ Import your target account list from your CRM (Hubspot/Salesforce/Affinity). ↳ Segment these accounts based on deal stage, ICP definition, and intent signals (e.g., job changes among champions, product usage). 🔍 Phase 3: Identifying Leads ↳ Find warm paths for introductions into your target accounts, either directly to decision-makers or indirectly through influential contacts. ↳ Use existing connections to help account executives multithread conversations and accelerate deal closures. 🌱 Phase 4: Nurturing Network ↳ Dedicate time each week for execs to grow their network.  ↳ Create and share educational content with your network to 'build trust at scale', engage with posts, connect with new ICPs, and participate in podcasts, events, webinars, etc. This playbook is about developing deeper authentic connections and playing long term games with long term people. We're co-creating this GTN Playbook in realtime with the wider community - what's missing? What else should we add?