I was first inspired to write this post after reading Sam Altman’s post on “How to Invest in Startups”. The reason this blog post stuck out to me is that commonly it is startups that go around to find investors and not the other way around. However, Sam wrote it in a way that flips the role and that inspired me to write a guide on networking via a parallel perspective from Sam’s blog.

There’s a saying that goes “it’s not about what you know but whom you know”.

Throughout my college years, there was always this sense of abstractness when it comes to networking. There are events like socials, career fairs, networking events where people attend for the sole purpose of “networking”. Although there are a lot of articles out there about why networking is useful and essential for a person’s success in life sadly there aren’t many on teaching you how to actually do good network.

People tend to dislike the term “networking”, labeling it as something “dirty” as it feels like you’re just using people for your own benefit. Yes, networking is about using people to benefit your own goals; but no, that doesn’t mean you can go around expecting people to help you without offering your fair share of effort.

Networking should be a symbiotic relationship. It shouldn’t be a “dirty” term to use people, you use your friends for emotional support and they use you back. Same goes for networking.

Below is my own cumulative experience, observations and personal opinions on how to conduct good networking. I will refer to people you want in your network as your potential mentors.

1. Expand your current network pool

A network, by definition, is basically a mesh of individual units that communicate with one another. So the first step is to enlarge your access to encompass a wide range of people.

How do you do this? Well, start with what you have first: friends, coworkers, professors, parents, relatives, customers, managers. From there you go a bit further to tap into the next layer of nodes: friends of friends, co-worker’s ex-manager, family friend, etc.

The key here is to keep an open mind and be curious to learn. Don’t dismiss or look down on anyone just because an individual does not fit your idea of a valuable network. For all you know, your gardener’s employer’s sister’s friend might be your next ticket to a job referral or business investment.

Another effective method to enlarge your network(something Sam touches upon too) is producing long-form content such as writing blogs and creating tutorials. This will encourage people that are like-minded as you(which you want in your network) to reach out and thus automatically expanding your network.

2. Do some superforecasting

The next step in doing good networking is to cultivate an intuition on deciding whether a person will be an interesting and valuable node to you in the near future. If you need some pointers in doing some forecasting, you can check out this book that goes into details on how to do it. The important part here is making sincere friendships and relationships before a person is famous or successful.

This step can yield a better rate of return since it is relatively harder to build a genuine connection once a person is successful as people tend to be more wary of making new friends.

Think about this simple equation where:

Trust built = time spent cultivating a relationship

A successful person values their time at a higher value, so…

The more successful a person, the harder the activation cost is needed to win over their trust(higher time-value of money needed).

Some good places to scout potential successful contacts are seniors in colleges, MBA students at top universities, startup demo days and co-working spaces.

Essentially, you want to start forming genuine relationships with people before they are successful. It’s similar to investing in a company before they IPO but this time you’re investing in relationships.

3. Make the first move

A lot of people think of networking as something you go about asking for favors, referrals, and feedback from people without putting any effort of your own. Well, newsflash! No one really likes to offer their time to someone who takes things for granted.

When you are asking for someone’s time, the least you can do is doing the due diligence of the subject matter. Don’t go asking a mentor for investments if you’ve never considered all your options like bank loans, bootstrapping, crowdfunding and etc.

It also makes networking easier if you offer your own time first. You might think that you have nothing to offer compared to an industry expert but if you brainstorm hard enough you will find something to offer.

Offer to hold yourself accountable, offer to spread the word of your mentor’s growing business, offer your own expertise in something you know, it can be anything!

Offering something before asking for help shows that you are here to learn, grow and will do what it takes to be successful. It also shows you aren’t taking the mentor’s help for granted.

4. Following up and showing progress

Once you’ve established a relationship with a mentor, you should always follow up and update them to show your progress. Most people genuinely want to help another individual in their goals but they also want to feel like they’ve contributed to your success.

By offering updates, you allow your mentor to see your progress from a top-down view. Even when you do not explicitly say that it is their contribution, the mentor will feel like they’ve contributed it and be happy for you.

Happy people will want to help you more and they might even connect you to other mentors in adjacent industries that might come in handy.

That’s it for my guide in doing good networking; if you need a recap here’s a TLDR:

  1. Expand current network pool
  2. Do superforecasting
  3. Make the first move
  4. Follow up with updates