Let's touch on the topic of networking, I'll share my thoughts and personal experience. If yours is different, please share in the comments. And first of all, I'll consider networking as a means for startup development.

Networking is a hyped magic pill that, according to the authors of the definition and bloggers, can solve any problems—you just need to purposefully build a network of contacts. The first part of the thesis is true: if you have many friends and acquaintances in different fields, you can easily solve problems and tasks. Just call the right people. But the second part doesn't work: if you don't have a network and generally don't like making acquaintances, then deliberately developing your phone book won't give you any advantages. Why?

As soon as you start looking at people around you as functions, you turn into an efficient manager-clinger who tries to latch on, extract something from a person, and be pleasant for the sake of gain. But people sense that, and good connections don't come from this approach. However, everything starts working perfectly once you decide for yourself: I am just a good and pleasant person, I will help people and communicate, and I will meet and build connections with those I enjoy doing so with. Cool? But it sounds like a completely uncontrollable process. Plus, there's a story that for an intelligence officer to recruit someone, dozens of specialists prepare a dossier on that person, and then he makes 8 to 10 meetings before attempting recruitment. And it's clear that the quality of the relationship they build is due to the complexity of the task, and we hardly ever encounter that. But is it worth building connections to make a small sale (which sounds like 3-4 meetings) or to get a consultation (1-2 meetings)?

Therefore, for myself, I chose the path of helping people and not trying to build my "network" deliberately. But I make an effort to remember existing contacts and reach out to people if their expertise is needed. But not try to sell my product to acquaintances if they are 100% unlikely to be interested. What about networking for you?