学习如何打造自己的社交网络

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📝 如何建立自己的社交网络

在不同的国家，不同的地区，用不同的语言，建立自己的社交网络，让你不管在business上，还是在私交上，都能够来去自如。这个非常非常的重要。

背景介绍：

a16z投资人 @andrewchen 25岁从西雅图移居到硅谷，至今7年。他收获了事业和朋友，他的分享： 1、约1对1咖啡聊天 2、询问建议 3、要求介绍更多人 4、发现自己优势，拿事聊天 5、通过写作放大 6、少参会

如何闯入硅谷

学习andrewchen的方法，用自己的经历作为参照，学习和实践。

如果您从事科技工作，您将永远不会后悔在湾区度过了3-5年。

^^ 这是我多年来一直给人们的建议，它是根据我自己的经历形成的——毕竟，我在2007年搬到了湾区，它彻底改变了我的生活。

如何？

我遇到了很多令人难以置信的人，其中一些人继续创造了主要产品并创建了独角兽公司。大部分仍在建设中

我被介绍给许多投资者，他们现在经营着一些主要的风险投资公司和投资者网络

学到了很多！

结交了终生的朋友

形成了我的世界观的基本方面

由于最近人工智能的蓬勃发展，我遇到了很多科幻小说的新手。许多人非常有意地想要建立自己的网络并扎根于湾区，并完全沉浸在科技中。在最初的几年里，我学到了很多东西，并且想将我的一些经验传承下去。

尤其：

个人病毒循环：向人们索取更多人

寻求建议并倾听

为什么“拥有某物”有帮助

知道你能带来什么

找到你的崇拜者

博客/推文有何帮助

为什么我避免参加会议/活动

在睡觉时建立网络

我第一次搬到旧金山湾区时，是一名25岁的书呆子，有着平淡的简历和伟大的科技梦想。我只认识两个人，仅此而已。但我非常有意地想建立一个强大的专业网络并向人们学习。我做的第一件事就是有意识、有条理地对待这件事，请我认识的两个人坐下来，推荐5到10个人让我见面——他们给我做了很多电子邮件介绍。科幻科技文化的神奇之处在于它确实有效！尽管介绍中的背景信息非常少，但人们愿意喝杯咖啡并分享他们正在做的事情以及他们在过去几年中学到的东西。

每次会议结束后，我都会跟进我从谈话中学到的一些要点，然后再邀请两三个人会面。这就像构建我自己的个人病毒循环，每次聊天都会变成更多聊天。在我来到湾区的前六个月里，我每天都会结识3到5个新朋友。我学到了令人难以置信的数量。我可以确认这仍然是可能的，正如我认识的其他人近年来所做的那样。

你可能会问，你们最后聊什么？作为刚搬到该地区并开始从事科技行业的人，您可以添加什么价值？答案是，您只需寻求建议即可。人们从世界各地搬到湾区，因为他们对自己正在建设的东西充满热情。他们喜欢谈论这个。如果你也有自己热爱的事情，并寻求建议，你一定会得到很多帮助。 SF技术社区的文化非常开放，介绍文化让与各种新人聊天变得很容易。

对我来说，我来自西雅图，我向人们询问了我作为局外人所不了解的科技行业的各种奥秘。为什么湾区有如此多的消费者成功案例，而其他地方却没有？天使投资和风险投资如何运作？他们为什么不在半岛建造更多的房屋/办公室？等等。

也就是说，当你有“一件事”时，对话会更有成效。我的意思是，当你创办公司、创建新播客、开发新项目或新书或其他东西时，所有这些对话和网络都会更有用。当您心中有一个明确的目标时，对话通常对所有相关方都更有价值，因为您正在使自己成为特定领域的专家，并且您的问题也更相关。否则你肯定会遇到非常忙碌的人，他们只是拒绝“喝咖啡”来“赶时间”，因为这是对时间的浪费。我鼓励你进行自己的探索，甚至更好地进行一个特别有趣的探索，这样你与人们的对话就可以尽可能富有成效。

就我而言，我对用户增长、指标、网络效应和营销方面的最新技术非常感兴趣。我向每个人询问了这个话题，并开始发展我自己的想法并自由分享。最终，人们发现，一些面向PayPal黑手党的小社区在他们的想法中走得最远。这就是我最终接触到保留曲线、DAU/MAU、病毒循环等概念的原因。

我对这些想法很感兴趣，因为我在那之前的专业经验实际上是广告技术。我之前曾与来自《华尔街日报》、《哥伦比亚广播公司》、《MySpace》等公司的客户一起从事在线广告工作，甚至还获得了一项关于广告定位的专利（是的，US7747676B1）。我在CAC、A/B测试、漏斗优化、潜在客户发掘等领域知识方面拥有超强能力，并开始将所有这些思维与消费产品相融合。在2007年，这是最前沿的，当时产品的成功通常是通过产品的注册总数等虚荣指标来衡量的。我把这些专业知识带到了桌面上，我讨论了其中的一些知识和想法，以及它们如何应用于产品。有时，我会因为这种专业知识而被介绍给有趣的人，对此我很感激。

我有时开玩笑说湾区被邪教统治。早在2007年，就有一股围绕量化自我的狂热，许多人开始倡导 Crossfit、keto、Soylent 和其他健康趋势。有人制造机器人和硬件。 PayPal黑手党是一个现象，但仔细观察，就会发现斯坦福大学计算机科学人员甚至加拿大黑手党都有一个庞大的网络。还有火人节的人们。 2007年，YCombinator刚刚起步，我很幸运能见到许多早期的人，当时他们还住在北海滩，严格吃拉面。如今，这些邪教已经发展，但它们仍然存在——找到一个适合你的邪教，或者开始一个邪教，这是一个巨大的优势。几年后，我加入了Uber，并想到有一天会出现一个前Uber崇拜者。我认为这已经发生了，并且该网络中有无数的创始人、投资者和建设者。

第一年，我了解到写下来的重要性。我立即开始做的另一件事就是写下我所学到的一切。 2007年初，我在Blogger平台上创建了一个真正的/专业的博客，最初，我遇到了写作障碍，因为我试图想出令人惊叹且宏伟的想法，并与世界分享。第一个月，我就有了20个电子邮件订阅者，他们都是我强制订阅的朋友和家人。但最终，我为自己制定了一个更成功的策略，我将简单地记录我所学到的东西。事实证明，如果有人告诉你一个独特的想法，我会把它当作一个秘密来对待（或者至少，我会征求许可）。通常情况下，十几个人会谈论同一个想法，而共识模因在空中飘荡，我专注于把它们写下来。我发现我的很多博客都不是关于发明全新的想法，而是简单地收集和扩展当前的科技时代精神。几个月后，罗伯特·斯科布尔从他的博客链接到了我的博客，这给了我很大帮助。（谢谢你！）

正是抱着这种态度，我开始撰写有关病毒式循环、增长、黑客攻击、衡量留存率、产品/市场契合度以及所有其他定义我的写作的概念的文章。

与有趣的人交谈，写下出现的想法的扩展版本，从而向更有趣的人展示，然后冲洗和重复，这是一个良性循环。这个核心循环在最初几年帮助推动了我的职业网络的发展。在后来的几年里，我增加了一些建议和投资。

15年多过去了，一想到无意间养成的写作和阻塞的习惯今天仍然伴随着我，我就觉得很奇怪。事实上，这个习惯是如此强大，以至于我建议您在几乎任何其他专业“社交”活动之上都这样做。当然，今天您可能会制作视频或播客而不是写作。或者，如果您是一名工程师，请在GitHub上发布您的代码。这都是同一个概念。将您的作品投入到世界中，无论是文本、视频还是代码，并让其参与到世界中。

通过这种方式，你就可以在睡觉的时候建立你的网络。人们会找到您、您的工作和您的想法，这样您就不必花时间参加100万次咖啡会议。

特别是，我发现写作比参加会议更有力量。关于旧金山科技行业，您会注意到的一件事是，这里有无穷无尽的活动和会议。二级创业中心可能每一两个月都会举办一次大型科技活动，而旧金山每天都会举办一次。有办公室预热、产品发布、新的人工智能聚会、多洛雷斯的聚会、引人注目的大型会议、黑客马拉松等等。品种无穷无尽。

然而随着时间的推移，我发现它们的可扩展性不如写作。它们很有趣，而且进行一对一的对话比创建内容容易得多。当你认真思考你花多少时间参加会议、会议之间的所有时间，以及当你讲话时，听众中实际上有多少人在听。与任何类型的数字平台相比，您可以编写简介，然后成千上万的人会看到您的想法。

回到我最初的主张，我认为在SF工作3-5年很难后悔。许多人说这不是一个适宜居住的地方——有时这似乎是真的。其他人讨厌单一文化。然而，你总是可以搬回家，当你搬回家时，你将永远是拥有硅谷技术经验的人。此外，学习曲线如此之大，尤其是对于初创公司创始人而言，资本和同行网络也是如此。这是一个独一无二的地方，我强烈建议创始人花几年时间，即使他们不打算长期留下来。

英语原文

How to break into Silicon Valley.

If you work in tech, you'll never regret spending 3-5 years in the Bay Area.

^^ this is advice I've been giving to people for years, and it's shaped by my own experience -- after all, I moved to the Bay Area in 2007 and it completely changed my life.

How?

I met tons of incredible people, some of whom went on to create major products and found unicorn companies. Most are still building

I was introduced to many investors who today run some of the major VC firms and investor networks

learned so much!

made life long friends

formed fundamental aspects of my world view

Because of the recent AI boom, I've been meeting a lot of folks who are new to SF. Many folks very intentionally want to build out their network and get rooted in the Bay Area, and to fully immerse themselves in tech. I learned so much in my first few years and wanted to pass along some of my lessons.

In particular:

personal viral loop: Asking people for more people

ask for advice and listen

why it's helpful to "have a thing"

know what you bring to the table

find your cult

how blogging/tweeting is helpful

why I avoid conferences/events

building a network while you sleep

I first moved to the Bay Area as a 25 year old nerd with a light resume and big tech dreams. I knew exactly 2 people, and that was it. But very intentionally, I wanted to build a strong professional network and to learn from people. The first thing I did was to be intentional and methodical about it, by asking the two people I knew to please sit down and suggest 5 to 10 people for me to meet -- an they did a number of email intros for me. The amazing thing about SF tech culture was that this worked! Although the intros were very light on context, people were willing to grab coffee and share what they were working on, and what they've learned over the last couple years.

After each meeting, I would follow up with a few bullet points on what I learned from the conversation, and then ask for two or three more people to meet. This was like building my own personal viral loop, where every chat turned into a few more chats. For my first six months in the Bay Area, I ended up meeting 3 to 5 new people every day. I learned an incredible amount. I can confirm this is still possible, as others I know have done it in recent years.

You might ask, what do you end up talking about? What value can you add as someone who's just moved to the area and is starting in tech? The answer is, you simply ask for advice. People move to the Bay Area from all over the world because they're incredibly passionate about what they're building. They love talking about that. and if you have something that you're passionate about too, and ask for advice, you were sure to get a lot of it. The culture in the SF tech community is very open and the intro culture makes it easy to chat with a variety of new people.

For me, I was coming from Seattle, and I asked people about various mysteries of the tech industry I didn't understand as an outsider. Why were there so many consumer successes in the Bay Area but not elsewhere? How does angel investing and VC work? Why don't they build more houses/offices in the Peninsula? And so on.

That said, the conversations are more productive when you have "a thing." What I mean by that is that all of these conversations and networking are more useful when you are starting a company, creating a new podcast, are working on a new project or book, or something else. When you have a directed goal in mind, then the conversations often are more valuable for all parties involved, because you were making yourself an expert in a particular area and your questions are more relevant. Otherwise you will surely encounter very busy people who simply refuse to "grab coffee" to "catch up" because it's a poor use of time. I encourage you to be on a quest of your own, and even better a particularly interesting quest, so that your conversations with people can be as productive as possible.

In my case, I was very interested in the state of the art on growing users, metrics, network effects, and marketing. I asked everyone about this topic, and began to develop my own ideas that I would share freely. Eventually, it became clear that a few small communities orienting the PayPal mafia were the furthest along in their thinking. And that's how I ended up being exposed first to concepts like retention curves, DAU/MAU, viral loops, and so on.

These ideas were interest to me, because my professional experience leading up to that point was actually an adtech. I had previously worked in online ads, with customers from WSJ, CBS, MySpace, etc, and had even gotten a patent filed on ad targeting (yes, US7747676B1). I had a superpower in my domain knowledge of CAC, A/B testing, funnel optimization, lead gen, etc, and began to merge all of this thinking with consumer products. In 2007 this was cutting edge at a time when product success was often measured by vanity metrics such as the total registrations for a product. This bit of specialized knowledge was what I brought to the table, and I talked about some of those learnings and ideas, and how they might apply to products. Sometimes I'd get intros to interesting people simply because of this expertise, which I appreciated.

I sometimes joke that the Bay Area is ruled by cults. Back in 2007, there was a cult surrounding quantified self, which intersected with lots of folks kicking off Crossfit, keto, Soylent, and other health trends. There were people building robots and hardware. The PayPal mafia was a thing, but look a little closer, and there was a huge network of Stanford CS people and even Canadian mafias. And Burning Man people. In 2007, YCombinator was just getting off the ground, and I was lucky to meet many of the early folks back when they were living in North Beach on strictly ramen diets. Today, those cults have evolved but they still exist -- there is a huge advantage in finding one that suits you, or even better, starting one. Years later I joined Uber and had the idea one day there would be an ex-Uber cult. I think that's happened, and there's been countless founders, investors, and builders from that network.

In the first year, I learned the importance of writing things down. The other thing I started to do right away was to write down everything that I was learning. I started a real/professional blog at the beginning of 2007 on the Blogger platform and initially, I got writers block because I was trying to come up with amazing and grandiose ideas that I would share with the world. My first month, I had 20 email subscribers, from friends and family I forcibly subscribed. But eventually, I created a more successful strategy for myself, where I would simply document what I was learning. It turned out that if one person told you a unique idea I would treat it like it was a secret (or at least, I would ask permission). It was often the case that a dozen people would talk about the same idea, and there was simply consensus memes floating around in the ether, and I focused on writing those down. I find that a lot of my blogging has been less about inventing brand new ideas, but instead simply collecting and expanding on the current tech zeitgeist. A few months in, Robert Scoble linked to my blog from his, and that helped a ton. (Thank you!)

It was with this attitude that I began to write about viral loops, growth, hacking, measuring retention, and product/market fit, and all the other concepts that came to defined my writing.

There is a virtuous cycle in talking to interesting people, writing down expanded versions of ideas that come up, thus being exposed, to more interesting people, and rinsing and repeating. This core loop helped power the growth of my professional network over the first few years. In later years, I added a dash of advising and investing.

15+ years later it's weird to think that accidentally developing a habit of writing and blocking would still be with me today. In fact, this habit is so powerful that I recommend doing it above and beyond almost any other professional "networking" activity. Of course today you might be making videos or podcasts instead of writing. Or if you're an engineer, publishing your code on GitHub. It's all the same concept. Putting your work into the world, whether it's text or video or code, and letting that engage the world.

In this way, you are building your network while you sleep. People find you and your work and your ideas, so that you don't have to put in time for 1 million coffee meetings.

And in particular, I find writing to be much more powerful than going to conferences. One thing you'll notice about the SF tech industry is that there are endless events and conferences. Whereas a secondary startup hub might have a major tech event once every month or two, SF has them every day. There's office warmings, product launches, new AI meetups, hangouts at Dolores, big splashy conferences, hackathons, and so on. There are endless varieties.

However over time, I've found them to be less scalable than writing. They are fun, and it's much easier to have a one on one conversation than it is to create a content. When you really think through how much time you spend getting to a conference, all the time between sessions, and when you speak how few people are actually in the audience listening. Contrast to any kind of digital platform where you can write a blurb and 1000s of people see your ideas.

Going back to my original assertion, I think it is hard to regret 3-5 years working in SF. Many people say it's not a great place to live -- and sometimes that seems true. Other folks hate the monoculture. However you can always move home, and when you do, you'll always be the person with Silicon Valley tech experience. And furthermore, the learning curve is so strong, particularly for startup founders, as is the network of capital and peers. It's a one of a kind place, and I highly recommend founders spend a few years even if they don't intend to stay in the long run.

🤗 总结归纳

打造人际瓜系网络的一个很好的做法，值得学习和推荐！1:1的约人聊天，希望他们能够给出建议，帮忙介绍更多人认识，扩展自己的网络，然后在自己的专业领域，能够和这些人产生联系。带着事情聊，会更高效，发现自己的优势和自己做的事，放大自己的优势，让别人遇到这类事情，可以想到你，这个是最关键的。接下来少去参加大会，这几年参加过不少大会，确实对实际的业务增长没有撒太大帮助，对自己的个人能力提高也没有太大帮助。

📎 参考文章

Will对andrewchen的-如何在硅谷从零打造自己的社交网络的翻译

andrewchen(a16z investor) — How to break into Silicon Valley

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