Instead of Networking, Build a Serendipity Engine — Daniel Stillman

I think business networking is a complete waste of time. And I know there are people and companies popularizing this concept because it serves them and their business model well, but the reality is if you’re building something interesting, you will always have more people who will want to know you. Trying to build business relationships well in adv

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Increase your surface area for luck

The last couple times I was looking for a project, I made a point of meeting as many people doing related work as I could, even if there was no obvious benefit to doing so. At first, I did this just to advertise my existence to people as I entered a new field, because someone is always hiring or looking for a cof... See more

Can you engineer serendipity? In the “surface area of luck” theory, your chance of being lucky equals the actions you take towards your passion multiplied by the people you tell. Luck = (Passionate Doing) x (Effective Telling) h/t @VirenOswall 1/ https://t.co/BhvclGutBw

Serendipity needs unlikely collisions and discoveries, but it also needs something to anchor those discoveries. Otherwise, your ideas are like carbon atoms randomly colliding with other atoms in the primordial soup without ever forming the rings and lattices of organic life. The challenge, of course, is how to create environments that foster these

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