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How to Become Well-Connected

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Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#31

Post by Matetricks »

gertef wrote: post #26
Matetricks wrote: post #20

Chris is an amazing person who takes the time to get to know you. When we were fundraising, instead of having us do a regular pitch he took me to an event where Peter Thiel was giving a talk about his new book. We were a chess education company, so he thought it would be good for us to talk with Thiel as he's a chess master himself. He didn't end up investing in us but my experience with him was much more memorable t…

How much funding did you seek for a chess education company?

It was called Chesscademy and we were raising $750k.

We were tackling the adaptive learning problem by creating tailored curricula. The plan was to move outside of chess to other subjects as we grew, but we found monetization to be very difficult.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#32

Post by gertef »

pdog wrote: post #4

These are good techniques for working a network but you'll need better advice than "be human" if you want to be influential. Networking is overrated. Figure out what you're good at and make sure people hear about it. The network will take care of itself.

> "be human"

"The key is authenticity. If you can fake that, you can acheive anything."

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#33

Post by kawera »

skevvis wrote: post #25
kawera wrote: post #16

He cites Contactually for managing his network, which seems nice, but it's too expensive for me and I generally prefer self-hosted solutions. Does anyone knows of good alternatives?

Hey there - I'm Zvi, CEO of Contactually. Honestly, if cost is a major factor for you, you can build a spreadsheet tool that can work really well. However, it takes the same discipline that Contactually or any other tool would require - just a bit more time. If you really love self-hosted, SugarCRM is the main open source CRM out there.

Thank you, your service seems great and well worth it's price but I really can't afford $500/y specifically for this right now. So far I've been playing the spreadsheet game but it does take a lot of time - I may eventually write a little django crud/workflow app one of these days... sugar codebase scares me!

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#34

Post by AndrewKemendo »

This whole thing has a huge assumption behind it: That you're someone worth being connected to.

His distinction between the Hunted and the Hunters is great, but 99% of people don't fall into the "Hunted" category unless they are doing something exceptional - and even those doing something exceptional aren't typically hunted.

So while I think this is a good list, and it's pretty bog standard Carnegie/How to read people/HUMINT etc..., the most important thing you can do to become well connected is to be doing something that is worth connecting to.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#35

Post by coldtea »

mindcrime wrote: post #29
jobu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, this article is a re-hash of what Dale Carnegie started teaching over 100 years ago. My main takeaway from that class was to ask enough questions when I meet someone so that I can to steer the conversation toward a mutual interest. After that the personal connection is made and conversation is fun and easy. The best way to make an impression on someone is to ask questions about them until you find some

The best way to make an impression on someone is to ask questions about them until you find some Yes, but you have to be careful or you can make the person feel like they are being interrogated. Maybe not quite to the level of shining a bright light in their face and asking "where were you at 8:00pm on the night of January 23rd", but still, an endless stream of questions - done poorly - can make people feel uncomfort…

>Them: "Activism is really important to me, especially around climate change. I wouldn't have gone to a school that didn't have that aspect."

Off topic, but this is so cringe-worthy...

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#36

Post by BatFastard »

pdog wrote: post #4

These are good techniques for working a network but you'll need better advice than "be human" if you want to be influential. Networking is overrated. Figure out what you're good at and make sure people hear about it. The network will take care of itself.

Networking is one way of making sure people hear about it. And depending on what the message is, possibly the most effective.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#37

Post by ryandrake »

I consider myself reasonably outgoing, but I've always viewed "networking" as kind of slimy and insincere. At a fundamental level, population A has little to offer / little power and population B has a lot, and networking is the set of personal interactions that population A employs in order to have a shot at interacting/transacting with population B. The "hunter/hunted" relationship mentioned in this article is a key differentiator between networking and other forms of human interaction. All of the various tactics described in this article and others about effective networking just seem to boil down to pretty abstractions on top of that crass business logic. Convey genuine appreciation, listen with intent, blah blah blah--everyone doing the dance knows what the music is all about. Nobody is fooling anyone.

Networking is definitely a skill, I'll give you that, but it has the sincerity of a sales pitch.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#38

Post by robertothais »

speeder wrote: post #6

I liked the article but it doesn't explain how to start a network... much of its advice is about how to manage an existing one. Examples: it mentions that you should sometimes offer stuff to people you already know, instead of only interacting to ask. But what to do when your network is nonexistent and you have nothing to offer?

I like to think of networking as being loosely analogous to an optimization process like gradient descent [1]. You start with an initial "guess" of what your optimal network could potentially be. In practice, this will be the people you already know through school, work or through friendships. From there, you follow an iterative process that improves that guess through successive iterations, consistently applying strategies like those described in the article.

It's hard to say when this process would "converge", but looking for an answer to that may be straining the analogy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradient_descent

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#39

Post by kordless »

> How to Become Well-Connected

> “If you find yourself keeping score in your professional relationships, you’re on the wrong track.”

Being "well connected" is an objective here, given it's lead by "how to". That intent leads to keeping score, so it's less than obvious how to resolve becoming well connected without keeping score.

Not giving a shit about what others think is the SECOND step to the enlightenment. The FIRST step is letting go of self judgment. Accepting self first allows one to realize that speaking for other's intent, even if they are blaming, may originate from their own self-judgements.

I no longer give a shit what anyone thinks about what I say because I realize I can only speak for my own choices and not others, not because I don't have empathy for other's thoughts. That's not to say I've perfected this technique however, I frequently catch myself blaming others when blame is going around. I can only set intent to become better myself. Others have the choice of doing the same, or not.

Re: How to Become Well-Connected

#40

Post by josh_carterPDX »

Sigh. Not a big fan of articles like these because it's different for everyone and there are a lot of variables that can make this a success or failure. There is not a play book for how to connect with people other than just not being a complete dick. There. I just gave you an awesome tip. Don't be a dick and people will want to talk to you. Be authentic. Not sure why people feel the need to write an article that serves as a reminder on how you can connect with people on a "real" level.
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