How to network when you’re bad at networking
Amelia’s Newsletter #8
In school, I was told countless times that building a great network would be key for my career. To do this, I was supposed to print business cards and copies of my resume, put on a suit, and go to these things called “networking events”, where I was then supposed to try to guess who would be useful to my future career and exchange contact info.
Some people like this, some people don’t. I hated it.
“I’m a homebody nerd who doesn’t go out!” I thought. My life overwhelmingly consisted of doing physics homework into the wee hours. I didn’t drink, party, or eat out - and I didn’t hang with whatever crowd of cool kids who seemed to be naturally good at this.
So I forced myself to go to these events. And then I stopped going. It all felt contrived, inauthentic, and awkward. And I felt really, really bad at it.
I concluded I was doomed to be bad at this networking thing and resigned myself to my fate.
To my great surprise, over a decade later I am lucky to have what many would call a great network. But what ended up working for me was completely different from what I was taught.
If you too feel like you are bad at networking, all is not lost. Here is an alternate approach. Maybe it will resonate with you.
Curiosity-led networking
I’ve never heard a term for the way I do this, but I call it curiosity-led networking.
Here’s how it works:
In 2021, my cofounder was pregnant and we were trying to figure out how to write our own maternity policy. Easy, we thought. We’ll just ask other female founders building venture backed startups who’ve had kids while doing it.
This turned out to be way, way harder than we thought. We looked everywhere and found barely anyone. “Where are the other mom founders??” And in a world with a million founder groups, and a million mom groups, how was it that there was not a single community for the intersection of the two?
Maybe there are more women out there like us, and if we fly our flag, they’ll come. So we posted a tweet and VC Backed Moms was born.
Four years later, VC Backed Moms is now the world’s largest community of venture backed founders at all stages of motherhood, with 500 founders and over $5B raised between all our companies. It is also a ridiculously impressive, badass, and inspiring group of women.
In other words, what started out as a question we needed to answer, turned into a killer professional network.
The way it works is actually really simple and awesome: Follow your curiosity to find like-minded people. It’s amazing. You can “network,” but by hanging out with people you genuinely like and share interests with.
Later, people told me this skill is also called community building, which I guess is a fancier term. But you don’t need to already think of yourself as a natural community builder (I sure didn’t) to try this out.
Just like learning any new skill or sport, you improve with practice. Math team needs transportation to an event? Organize a carpool. Cramming for the big exam? Start a study group. Can’t find other people on campus interested in startups? Start a club. All of these count.
In other words, curiosity-led networking is a muscle you can build over time. Here are two simple exercises anyone can do to get started.
Exercise #1: Practice cold reachout
Pick a topic you are curious to learn about.
Make a list of 5 people who are great at it. Choose people whose work you admire or who you know. This can not just be your friend who you think “is interested in this” or “seems like they’d be good at this” — they must have already done the thing you are looking to learn about.
Send them cold emails/DMs.
Here are real messages I sent when I was starting this Substack, to Lenny Rachitsky (Lenny’s Newsletter) and Waseem Daher (Startup Real Talk), whose work I deeply admire.
Exercise #2: Step up in a group
Pick a group you’re in that you’re passionate about. Choir, tennis club, vegan cooking, whatever!
Reach out to the organizer. Ask how you can help, or offer an idea.
Examples of how members of VC Backed Moms have done this well when reaching out to me:
Fortune favors the bold
It feels scary to reach out cold, especially to someone whose work you deeply admire. Don’t let that fear stop you.
You will get no’s. That’s okay. You will get more yes’es than you think.
Parting thoughts
If you hate networking, give curiosity-led networking a try. Following my curiosity to find like-minded people unlocked the ability to network in a way that felt authentic to me, and maybe it will for you too.
If you give this a try and it resonates with you, or if you recognize yourself in this post, I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks to Amy Sun, Joe DeSimone, Keir Mierle, Lisa Marrone, Waseem Daher, Lenny Rachitsky, Bridgette Farrer Muir, Asya Bradley, and the Ello team (we use the term “curiosity-led learning” to describe our own product!) for reading early drafts and for inspiring this post.