Growing My Social Capital

1)   Domain expert in your industry.

For this one I decided to contact the Textbook Boomerang company which does something quite similar to what the company that I want to build would do. They also help students match and exchange books in a similar fashion to how Ebay does it. The point in which in my concept is different is that it cuts transportation cost and makes the process more hassle-free. So I emailed one of the founders of the Textbook Boomerang, laying out my concept in few points and asking for their opinion. They were kind enough to respond, just to let me know that their company has not exactly taken off as they had expected and unforeseen challenges had appeared making the future of this company look quite grim. I thanked them for the very honest insight and expressed my hope that we could cooperate in the future.  

2)   Expert on your market.

For this one I decided to send out a couple of e-mails out to Amazon managers of different levels. It has 5 days and I have gotten no reply yet. This isn’t that surprising since I knew from previous experiences that contacting large corporations for advice with little to show will be probably not be taken very seriously. However I will continue poking Amazon for help in the future.

3)   An important supplier in the industry

Conviniently enough, the main and only supplier to my concept are same as customers, the students themselves. Hence I approached another random student on campus the same fashion I approached previous interviewees before and just  introduced my concept to her. The reaction was similar to the average I have received before; they would indeed give it a try and would be glad to have a place where they could get something back for the expensive books they have purchased throughout college time.