I Started to Love Networking Once I Finally Learned the Right Way to Do It
Are you one of those entrepreneurs who has the wrong mindset about networking?
At the start of my entrepreneurship class this week, I asked students to raise their hands if they have a LinkedIn account. Of the 40 people in the room, 39 raised their hands.
Next, I asked them to raise their hands if they had already connected with me on LinkedIn.
Only one person raised her hand.
“If you don’t fix this,” I warned my class, “you’re going to struggle being a successful entrepreneur.”
To be clear, the important thing wasn’t that my students connect with me. Heck, it wasn’t even that they should be using LinkedIn. I was sending a message to my entrepreneurship students that, if they want to succeed as entrepreneurs, they need to prioritize networking. And the fact that they’d met me — their entrepreneurship professor — and hadn’t immediately thought “I should probably connect with this person” was a warning sign that they don’t have the kind of networking mindset that’s critical for entrepreneurial success.
Living behind a computer screen
I should admit I didn’t always appreciate the value of networking. In fact, if you hopped in a time machine and traveled back 20 years to tell me I’d be writing articles extolling the virtues of networking, I wouldn’t believe you. As far as I was concerned, there was no way in hell I’d ever be one of those people. In my mind, the people who cared about networking were slimy schmoozers who were only interested in weaseling their way to money and power by tricking others into thinking they were friends.
That wasn’t me. I was a “tech founder.” And, as a tech founder, I believed I was above networking. As far as I was concerned, networking was only necessary if you didn’t already have the skills to build a great product. Since I could build great products, my products would speak for themselves. I’d build awesome things, people would discover them, and my startups would quickly scale to become billion dollar unicorns without me ever leaving the comfort of my keyboard.
I even took that mindset with me when I joined my first startup accelerator program. At the time, my co-founder and I were both software engineers. We were building a cool product, and we’d convinced one of the top startup accelerator programs in the United States we were a good investment.
Spoiler alert: We weren’t.
Instead, we spent the entire program hidden away in our apartment writing code and building what we thought was an incredible product. As we sat behind our computer screens and coded, I distinctly remember making snarky jokes about all the other companies in the accelerator because they were “wasting time” going to networking events and investor meet-and-greets. So far as we were concerned, while they were wasting time talking, we were doing “real work” building great products.
To be fair, by the end of the accelerator program, my cofounder and I did, indeed, have a great piece of software. It was miles ahead of all the other startups in the cohort. But nobody cared because nobody knew we existed.
Getting out from behind the laptop
I still remember the terrible feeling of seeing other companies in that accelerator program raising millions of dollars while we couldn’t get a single investor to write a check. I was in shock. “Why would anyone invest in those other companies?” I wondered. “Their products are crap! The founders can’t build anything. They’re just good at talking and schmoozing and chatting people up. Any investors who invest in them are just idiots.”
But the investors weren’t idiots. I was the idiot. And I continued being an idiot for another two years building the same company.
We kept adding more features. Nothing happened. We kept refining our product. Nothing happened. Eventually, despite having built an impressive piece of software, we had to shut down the company because it wasn’t making any money.
After this happened, I spent lots of time reflecting on what went wrong, I began thinking back to those other companies from my accelerator cohort who did raise money. What did they have that I didn’t?
They had networks!
The lesson became clear: building products isn’t the secret to startup success. Connecting with people is the secret to startup success. If I wanted to succeed, I had to change.
And I did. Slowly.
My transformation beyond the comfort zone of hermit-like coder into the intimidating world of pitch sessions and startup happy hours wasn’t instantaneous or easy. I began attending more events, not just as a spectator, but as an active participant. I pushed myself to get uncomfortable and engage in conversations. In the process, I discovered networking wasn’t actually about schmoozing or manipulation like I’d thought; it was about building genuine connections, sharing insights, and learning from the experiences of others. Eventually I began to appreciate that networking doesn’t mean taking what you want. If you want to do it right, you need to learn to give more than you take. By doing so, you end up building valuable relationships based on mutual respect, trust, and support.
Once you have those kinds of relationships, entrepreneurial success becomes much easier because you’re no longer entrepreneur-ing alone. You’re part of a shared community of mutual support that wants to lift everyone.
