How Entrepreneurship and Networking Are Synonymous With Each Other

A few days ago, I came across a question on Quora that sparked my interest. “What [is] the best network for developing entrepreneurship skills?” And I couldn’t help but backcast, as Mike Maples Jr. at Floodgate would call it, which I shared a bit more here. Looking at the entrepreneurs I know who have achieved some modicum of success, how did they build their entrepreneurial skills?

Taking it a bit further, what is one skill that they have that made all their other skills much easier to acquire and/or hone? And I could only come up with one answer, which is understood in various nominations. Resourcefulness. Scrappiness. Creativity under pressure. Staying lean. Frankly, their ability to hustle.

“The best network”

What is the best network for developing entrepreneurial skills?

The simple answer: One you build yourself.

The longer answer…

Entrepreneurship is a career that requires you to hustle. Likewise, a network you build yourself from reaching out and cold emailing has the potential to be stronger than even the best of networks out there. But entrepreneurship can come in two flavors: a hobby and a lifestyle.

A hobby or a lifestyle?

If entrepreneurship is a hobby, there are amazing collaborative:

  • Slack groups,
  • Subreddits,
  • Facebook groups,
  • Quora spaces,
  • Meetup groups,
  • Conferences/trade shows/expos,
  • You name it, it’s out there.

But it will be akin to sitting in a classroom and learning the theory and conceptualizations.

If entrepreneurship is a lifestyle, you need to learn by application. And unfortunately, you’ll need to develop scar tissue from making real mistakes outside the classroom. You need to hustle and find what works and doesn’t work for you. Two of my favorite venture firms, 1517 Fund and Hustle Fund, invest in founders who do exactly that. Unlike many other venture funds, it’s in their thesis. Learn by doing. Learn by hustling. While there is merit in literature and academic institutions, you are learning at the pace of the system. And when you’re a founder, often times, time is not on your side.

In a parallel, an entrepreneur once described the bifurcation as a “lean-back” versus a “lean-in” activity. A “lean-back” activity would be watching a sitcom, picking strawberries, or typing a simple response to an email chain. Whereas a “lean-in” would be playing football, playing a competitive first-person shooter game, or fixing a bug in the code 2 hours before a product launch. Entrepreneurship, as you might guess, is a “lean-in” sport. So is networking.

There are two French words I often allude to – savoir and connaître. Both mean to understand. Savoir means to understand on a superficial, factual level. Connaître means to know on a deeper, emotional level – to be deeply familiar with. As an entrepreneur, the lifestyle you choose is often not passive, but an active one, or some might argue, an aggressive one. One where the clock started ticking before you started. Sometimes, before you were even born. Ben Horowitz makes a brilliant comparison between a peacetime and a wartime CEO. From his piece, I’ll quote two of his juxtapositions:

“Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win.”

“Peacetime CEO has rules like ‘we’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number 1 or 2.’  Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number 1 or 2 and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule.”

Where you’re required to make decisions in difficult times, and if you don’t understand a concept or a skill to the level where it’s engrained in your bone, you will fumble more often than you run touchdowns. Part of the reason why second-time, third-time entrepreneurs usually perform better than first-time entrepreneurs.

I graduated from a stellar university, UC Berkeley, located at one of the epicenters of Silicon Valley/Bay Area, where I got my economics degree and a certification in entrepreneurship and technology. I took a number of classes that allowed me “to learn and hone” my entrepreneurship skills. While there were a handful, I came out feeling I was equipped with the knowledge to take on the world. When I put them to the test, I realized I knew nothing. When faced with reality, I didn’t know how to deal with edge cases since edge cases are rarely taught in the classroom.

Most communities and classes teach entrepreneurship skills in abstractions, making it easier to understand. Even this blog post is, in many ways, an abstraction. They rarely teach the edge cases ’cause frankly, there are too many “what if’s”. But as an entrepreneur, you need to be ready for the “what if’s”. For anything and everything. And over time, what transcends the individual skills you have is having a mental model to hedge yourself from future edge cases.

I once asked someone what being an expert meant. And I really liked his answer, as it stuck with me all these years. He said, “An expert is someone who has made all the mistakes in a very narrow field.”

Photo by Jed Villejo on Unsplash


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#unfiltered #31 The Art of Running into Walls – How to Confront Fear and Fear-Setting

Last night, I happened to re-stumble across a sentence in my collection of quotes that caught my eye.

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

Walter Bagehot
Journalist, businessman, essayist

The founder story

I’ve had this long-standing belief – which if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re no stranger to – that founders need to have a personal vendetta when building a business. They must have something to prove or someone they’d want to prove to. Building a business is finding where selfishness meets selflessness. In fact, I’d argue that’s true in every ideal professional career.

The path of entrepreneurship is one where resilience is the floor, not the ceiling. While I understand, it is not the only career path that carries this trait, it is the one I am most familiar with. And having asked 31 people, 18 of which are or have been entrepreneurs, I’ve learned that everyone, despite their job title or background, can be scared in the face of obstacles. Everyone feels fear, myself included. The question is what do we do next, after the feeling of fear enters our heart and mind.

Continue reading “#unfiltered #31 The Art of Running into Walls – How to Confront Fear and Fear-Setting”

The Best Way I’ve Heard to Ask “What did you learn?”

how to say no, learning

Yesterday, I grabbed a coffee with a friend – now a newly-minted manager. Between congratulations and hearing what she’s been up to, we dove into a rabbit hole about performance reviews. And out of everything she shared, there was one question that caught my attention:

What do you say “No” to now that you didn’t say “No” to when you started?

People are inherently loss-averse. We react stronger to losses than gains. Economic prospect theory has taught us that much. Essentialism, probably best popularized by author Greg McKeown, or a methodology that helps us differentiate between external noise and our internal signal, takes it a step further. For example, the questions:

  1. How much do you value an opportunity?
  2. And, How much would you sacrifice to obtain an opportunity?

… carry two different emotions. We take many aspects of our lives for granted. But when we lose any aspect of it – be it a body part, a friend or family member, or a habit – where we once lacked appreciation, we now find true value.

What we say “No” to carries layers of scar tissue – of our past we don’t want to relive. The French language has an incredibly apt way of describing knowledge. Savoir denotes simple knowledge acquisition. Connaître implies a familiarity with knowledge that is deeper and carved into one’s heart. When my friend decided to ask that question, she is looking for what her team members connaissent.

I love it! And I’m gonna steal it (well, with her permission)! For each time frame, we have a new set challenges to ‘pattern-recognize’. Founders have it cut out for them. And just by the nature of their work, they need to learn – fast.

Taking it a step further

Josh Waitzkin, author, chess champion, and martial arts champion, on Episode #412 of the Tim Ferriss Show, puts it quite elegantly:

“When I studied Tai Chi for a year, I thought I knew what I was doing. And I thought I was really started to understand it. But after 2 years, I realized everything I thought after a year was wrong. It was just wrong. But now I understood.

And then after 4 years, I realized everything I thought after 2 years was wrong. And he went on with this story and this pattern, but now I understood. And after 8 years, everything I thought after 4 years was wrong. And now I’ve been training for 16 years; everything I thought after 8 years was wrong. And now, I finally understand…

It’s easy to think we’re in the dark yesterday, but in the light today. But we’re in the dark today too.”

So, in foresight and honest vulnerability, I will take my friend’s question a step further:

What will you say “No” to tomorrow that you aren’t saying “No” to today?