I know folks who were broke and busy but had huge networks and tons of knowledge, who weaseled their way onto cap tables by being advisors. In fact, before I had any money, I would trade my network and knowledge of how to promote startups for equity.

Jason Child, a colleague of mine from my Arthur Andersen days (he’s now the CFO of Groupon), introduced me to Jason Kilar (who later became the founder and CEO of Hulu). They invited me to interview at Amazon.com

Reid and the rest of the founding team all sent invites to our professional contacts on launch day. We asked all those folks to try the v1 product and invite their professional contacts. In total that was maybe a couple thousand individuals …. Virtually all of the people who signed up in the first week were part of the startup ecosystem (so predisp