The Perils of the Startup Intro

It’s the crutch of every startup founder in Asia, a cultural hold-over from Silicon Valley: when we want to meet someone, we’ll look that person up on social media, and see who we have as a common friend or connection. Then we’ll ask for the most trusted mutual friend or connection to make the introduction to the person we want to meet.

After a while, I noticed that I had met most of them in my local community through these Silicon Valley-style introductions. While I liked having the social validation of a trusted friend’s endorsement, the pool of people within our second-degree network was limited. I was thus limiting the connections I could make by relying only on people I could be introduced to by someone who I already knew.

In the parlance of social network theory, I was relying too much on my strong ties — people I already know, interact with often, and spend time with. By virtue of our closeness, these people were bound to resemble me — we went to the same universities; worked as colleagues at the same companies; belonged to the same industry organisations; or attend the same events and conferences. As connections, there is little we can bring new to the table for one another because we are already raised and immersed in the same business environment.

The Beauty of Weak Ties

I thus sought to cultivate more of what are known as weak ties — people on the periphery of our typical circle, who have a greater chance of bringing new information by virtue of their uniqueness. They were not like me, nor my typical friends or colleagues. I specifically tried to develop weak ties with people abroad — e-commerce entrepreneurs in Singapore or fintech entrepreneurs in Indonesia. These were the kind of people who could bring insights that I could not glean from people who lived in the same bubble as me.

In time, my efforts paid off; I noticed that my knowledge of the tech community became more regional than local. Some of my weak ties eventually led me to clients or channel partners. Still others gave me referrals for people who would eventually become full-time employees, part-timers, or freelancers for us. This diversity became a strength for us because our team hailed from all different sectors and markets, we brought much more experience, knowledge, and domain expertise to the content marketing we did for our partners.

Too often, we rely on seeking people within our own network, even if it’s masked by the illusionary effort of asking for an introduction. We instead must consciously find people on the periphery of our own social networks and those even further removed, as these will be the people who bring us new ideas and information.

They’re the living embodiment of the 80/20 rule: They will bring us a disproportionate amount of strategic benefits relative to what little it took to reach out to them with a hello.