I’m 30 years old. I have an existing network who I like, trust, and knows my preferences in people. When I end up meeting someone new via an event or an intro from someone in my network, It’s almost always worth my time because they had to go through my network sponge to get to me. A network sponge is like my context shield. It’s all the people who know me. Who talk about me when others ask. The people who filter when someone wants to meet me. We all have network sponges. It’s our friends. Our family. Our business connections. Even our enemies. It’s everyone who knows us. At this point in my career, I trust my network sponge to generally surface very interesting people to me without me needing to do much work.

At the same time, people reach out cold to me every day. I have no context on them. They have no relevant context on me. And I’m one of 1,000 targets for them. And unfortunately, I almost never build a valuable relationship with these people. Even when I truly try. Even when I grab coffee with them and try to pay it forward. It just rarely works. The context is just too muffled.

So if you’re trying to get to me? Trying to get to anyone? Go through their network sponge. It may take longer. But the other path is a dead end.

Extra Notes

1. I started off just like every other founder with no network. I was a cold emailing savant. Need proof? Read this post on how I won over Jason Calacanis in 2018. I was the king of bypassing network sponges. And it caught up to me eventually.

2. I think the concept of network sponges are really important, and I don’t think I really did the concept justice in this post. I may further elaborate on the topic in another post.

3. Have no idea what this post means? Don’t have time to go through my network sponge? You can sign up for Seedscout and request an intro to me, now starting at $10/mo. I’ll accept your request.