Each day, hundreds of people stuff themselves into my inbox--pitches, career advice pleas, introduction requests. It's almost as if I hand out cash for a living or if my job is to know a lot of people in the NY tech community... oh, wait... that is my job.
So, one would assume, then, if someone had the opportunity to a) put me in a position where I'd really owe them a favor... big time b) be able to pitch me or talk out what they're up to, next steps, opportunities, etc w/o it even necessarily counting as a pitch b/c it's so informal and c) do something fun and outdoorsy, they'd take it, right?
Well, for the last seven years, I've been helping to promote use of NYC's public waterfront by volunteering for free kayaking programs. You may have seen or been to the ones on the west side at the Downtown Boathouse. I may have even put you in a kayak over the years--we did put 28,000 people on the water last year.
Well, this year, I'm running the newly formed Brooklyn Bridge Boathouse in the ridiculously awesome and new Brooklyn Bridge Park. Our "boathouse" is two shipping containers in the new park, and we've been having some great success in our first few weekends.
However, this weekend, we're way short on volunteering help, and so I'm recruiting from the NY tech community. Whatever I need to do to get you out there helping people out onto the water, fitting lifejackets, I'll do. Listen to your pitch? Done. Provide some useful biz dev intros after? Done. It's a rewarding volunteering experience in my mind, but if you want to see it as a potential business opportunity--I could certainly think of worse ways to try and get in front of a VCs time then by doing them a favor in a fun outdoorsy setting in the shadow of the lower Manhattan skyline.
We're particularly short on Sunday from 10:30-4. If you'd like to help out, the eventbrite rsvp is here: http://bbpbvolunteers080110.eventbrite.com/
More info is available on our website: http://www.bbpboathouse.org/
I'd certainly appreciate the help. I have to figure that among the thousands of people that frequent these boards or show up to tech networking events, that at least 4 or 5 of you might find it valuable to take a different approach to VC relationship building--or just be willing to try something new on a weekend and do something fun.