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CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.
There’s a case study that’s been taught at business schools for 25 years now. It’s titled Heidi Roizen and details the networking practices of the Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former entrepreneur of the same name. It features how she cultivates an extensive personal and professional network to benefit her and to benefit others.
Now, what’s remarkable about this case is that it came out right after the dotcom bust and before the rise of Web 2.0 and all the social networks and social media that followed. At the time there was no LinkedIn, you didn’t have any Twitter followers or Facebook friends.
And yet the case is still taught today because the networking insights in there are as relevant as ever. Our guest today says fundamentally nothing has changed about building a strong professional network. All that digital technology and the promise of frictionless scale obscures a simple truth that human connections are assembled one by one, interaction by interaction.
Our guest today is Heidi Roizen. She’s a partner at Threshold Ventures, a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the subject of the Harvard Business School case study, Heidi Roizen. Heidi, so glad to have you on the show.
HEIDI ROIZEN: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
CURT NICKISCH: Were you always a good networker? I mean, obviously we all get better with time, but are you extroverted? Were your parents good networkers? I’m just curious if you had a head start.
HEIDI ROIZEN: It’s an interesting question because I think first of all, people conflate being an extrovert with being good at building a network, and I don’t think they need to be the same thing. I think in fact, sometimes that person who’s an extrovert who wants to be the center of the room and is always talking and all of that, those aren’t necessarily the best skills to build a relationship with someone else. I have always been a person who’s been interested in other people. I think people’s stories are interesting. I think meeting people is interesting and I’ve always gravitated to getting to know other people.
And so I do think that that is something that helps me or has helped me evolve my own abilities to, as I call it, build a relationship driven life. But I have to say, I think it really came into focus when I became an entrepreneur of a company that was not funded. And every day you get up and think, who do I have to convince what to move the ball forward with my company? And so it really becomes do or die when you’re an entrepreneur.
CURT NICKISCH: What’s your philosophy on networking? How do you approach it?
HEIDI ROIZEN: I’m going to start by saying I hate the word networking because networking implies it’s very transactional. It implies this idea that you’re monkey barring your way from person to person to get something you want. It’s the antithesis of what I believe in. What I believe in is that you are a human being and you’re operating the world and until the AI overlords take over, we are still dependent on other humans that work with us. And so it’s good to build relationships with other people and to build them based on mutual respect and trust and a level of honesty and all of these things that it isn’t about gathering the most names.
It’s not about going to a cocktail party and walking away with the most contacts. It’s about finding the other people in any situation who are fellow travelers with you on any particular journey you may be on and building relationships with those people. And so it doesn’t matter if I’m one of a hundred in a room. If I find three other people that I resonate with and that I can follow up with and do something positive in both directions, then that was a good day.
CURT NICKISCH: So if collecting the most cards or just piling up LinkedIn connections is not the way to proceed or is one big mistake that people make, what are the others? What are things that you see people doing that just kind of seem counterintuitive to you?
HEIDI ROIZEN: So when I was first approached about the case, they told me what they wanted to write the case about, building business relationships. And I said, “Well, isn’t that just kind of common sense?” And they said, “Well, common sense is not that common. Trust me. It is not that common.” And so one of the things that I tell people over and over again is trust your common sense. Would you ask someone for a favor the first time you meet them in a social, in just a normal situation? No. You generally will only ask favors of people you already know.
And yet I find that very often people, the first time they’ll reach out to me is because they want something from me and that just doesn’t feel good. That feels kind of icky. And likewise, if I reach out to somebody the first time I reach out to them is simply because I want them to do something for me. It feels like you’re diminishing the relationship and prioritizing the transaction. And that to me is sort of the foundation of everything I talk about nowadays is prioritize the relationship, not the transaction. And if you have that as your high order bit so to speak, it will kind of help you dictate everything you do. And I think it really does become common sense.
Why would I expect someone to be kind to me or respectful towards me if I’m not respectful towards them? Why would I expect somebody to do me a favor if I’ve been sloppy in the way I’ve asked it and dumped a bunch of work on them? So much of this is common sense that probably you learned in first grade or your parents taught you, but we somehow lost that along the way.
CURT NICKISCH: Well help us remember here then. So let’s go through just a couple of the basic best practices you think for networking. I mean, sometimes you realize you want to reach out to somebody or get somebody in your network because you do need them.
HEIDI ROIZEN: Because you do need something and there’s no problem with reaching out to someone and giving them the reason why if you don’t have a relationship with somebody. You can start a relationship with someone by saying, “I’m reaching out to you because I’ve identified that you are a person who could help me with this. And so I’m reaching out for the specific help, but also I believe we could be helpful to each other in the future as well.”
So much of this is in the way you do something. So much of this is in the way you ask. Again, understanding your role and understanding in a relationship, what is your role in the relationship? And so if you put it first and say, “I am not in a relationship with this person. I would like to build the relationship with this person.” Relationships are two-way streets. And so generally you should think through, “I am coming into their world. I’m coming in with an ask, but what might their future asks be of me? What might the benefit to them be of knowing me?” And that may not be clear in the beginning.
There may be, particularly with… I deal with a lot of students and so particularly students think they have nothing to offer, but I say, “You know what? Even your gratitude, even being able to articulate something you learned, even just being respectful, following up, doing your homework before you make an ask. These are all ways that you show respect for a potential relationship.” And by the way, they should also lead to a better result in your ask.
CURT NICKISCH: I was wondering about that because if somebody reaches out to you, you’re Heidi Roizen, you were very accomplished. I mean, you’re friends with Bill Gates. It may be a two-way street, but it feels like to a lot of people, there’s a bigger lane on one side than the other.
HEIDI ROIZEN: And by the way, don’t reach out to me and ask me to forward something to Bill Gates when you don’t even know me. I mean, these are kind of the rules of the road sort of thing.
CURT NICKISCH: And so what is an ask that you’ve had recently where it came from somebody at the other end of this power dynamic, if you want to call it that, but they did it well and you were glad to help?
HEIDI ROIZEN: So the first thing: if you’re asking somebody you don’t know for something, they want figure out who you are. And so making yourself easy to find is really important. For example, I think people’s LinkedIn profiles are very, very important. I say that you should have a click to your LinkedIn profile unless you’re a very well-known person or the CEO of a company or something. If you’re not that, well-known, put a link to your LinkedIn profile in your email signature. So I get an email from you, I don’t know who you are. With one click I can learn about you and you control the message on LinkedIn.
B ut I think making yourself easy to find, making yourself easy to help. This is another thing people do that I think is a big mistake. When they ask for help, they dump the work on the other person because we’re all busy people. So when you want to ask someone for help, you draft the email request or the voicemail or whatever using the least amount of your own time when the respectful thing to do would be to package up the request and the groundwork for the request. So that’s easier for the other person to do.
I see this all the time in emails, right? Here’s an email that I would like you to forward to someone else, or even worse to three other people. And then the requester is expecting me, the favor giver, to spend time working on those emails or changing them or accommodating the fact that it’s supposed to be for three people, but you can’t send one email to three different people, especially when they’re competitors. So I just think… Again, another tip is when you’re asking someone for help, think through making it as easy for them to help as possible.
If somebody makes a very generic request… My joke is, if you could title the email Dear Occupant and still send it, it’s not a good email. You need to think about why am I asking this person? What is it about them that makes me believe they can help me? That’s actually compelling to people. We are wired to be helpful, but it’s easier to be helpful when there is a unique tie or reason. It gives you a foundation to build on in that helpfulness.
And then I do think people just resonate with: We’re all humans first and we’re our jobs second. So a human element, and that doesn’t mean telling your life story on something, but just explaining. For example, when people explain to me, “I’m reaching out to you because you were a woman who started a tech company in 1983 and I’m now trying to start one 40 years later than you, and I’m still facing some challenges that I bet you faced. Could I spend 15 minutes talking on the phone with you?” That’s another mistake. Whoever dictated that the standard meeting time is an hour over coffee. Whoever did that does not understand busy people. So being grateful, being respectful of someone else’s time, not overstepping your bounds.
CURT NICKISCH: Part of this is keeping the relationship warm over a period of time. But people are busy and you don’t want to just fill their inbox either. So where do you come down on sending somebody a note when you saw that they got mentioned in the press or they raised a round of funding? Or do you know that if you have a good relationship with somebody that you can reach out two years later and it’s just not going to seem abnormal?
HEIDI ROIZEN: There are certainly relationships where I may not have spoken to someone in years and I can text them one sentence and they’ll be responsive and vice versa. Somewhat, it’s a judgment call on how well do I know that person. I also think there is a great value in being personally consistent. I have a very consistent communication style. So if I reach out to someone, they kind of know what they’re getting with me, which is I think a helpful attribute.
I’d hate to call it personal brand because that sounds very sleazy, but I think a brand is a promise of consistency. And I do think that consistency in how you approach people and how you respond, I’m always responsive. I always close the loop. I’m always respectful. I try to be a little humorous. And I think again, that style and that holding up my end of the deal, even when I’m the one asking for a favor. And by the way, whenever I ask someone for a favor, I always end the ask with, “And by the way, if this makes you uncomfortable at all or it’s inappropriate.” I come up with the wording that says, “If you don’t want to do that, it’s okay with me.” I give people permission to tell me no. Which also helps, I think, build the relationship because again, it’s not about this individual transaction.
If you want to say no to me, that’s fine. It is about the relationship. And so I think a lot goes into just the crafting of how you interact with other people. And also by the way, I have no contact management system. I have no ticklers that say, “You should reach out to the person now because you haven’t talked to them for six months.” I’m very old school. I don’t have any of that. I use email. I use LinkedIn. A little bit social media, I’m not a fan of social media for reaching out because it’s so overwhelming. When it’s your birthday and you don’t even put the right birthday on Facebook and you have 500 people wishing you a happy birthday that you don’t even know. That doesn’t count.
So I think that that’s another important thing people should understand. Some people are phone people, some people are text people, some people are email people. And so understanding how to communicate with someone without forcing them into a new paradigm of communication, it’s just another way of respect. A lot of when I approach people, it’s very organic. I get these newsletters every day that tell me who got funded, and I’ll see one of my former students getting funded or somebody maybe that we met with and didn’t fund that got funded.
I think it’s a really nice gesture to send them an email just saying, “Hey, I just read about this. Congratulations.” Not because I have an intent with that, not because I’m expecting that whatever, they’re going to let me in their next round or something. It’s just because they took their time to… For example, on the pitch thing, they took their time to pitch me. We didn’t invest, but I have respect for them as a person and I might send them an email if I see that they got funding just because that’s a nice respectful thing to do for someone who took their time to pitch you.
CURT NICKISCH: How has just the explosion of social media and the scaling of social networks and obviously as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley you know about network effects, how has that influenced networking for good and for bad in your view?
HEIDI ROIZEN: For me, I think the biggest positive to social media is it’s a tracking device of other people. I can see what other people are thinking. I can see where they’re currently working. I don’t have to pay attention to who switched jobs and who got to where. And so it is a useful tool. I do not believe that it stands in the stead of the other way. I see it as an and, not an or. It is not a replacement for real world or one-on-one communications, and I don’t personally use it that way. But understanding how you’re making that connection and what that connection should be is important regardless of whether it’s in person, on email, on LinkedIn, on Facebook, whatever it is.
CURT NICKISCH: So it sounds like social media is kind of a relationship tracking tool for you. Relationship management maybe, not a relationship building tool. I have to ask about AI because somebody could send you a pitch or an ask. They might read something you wrote, they might see a video of you of an interview that you did and they could say, “Oh, I really appreciated what you said about this and that made me think about approaching you about such-and-such.” AI can kind of speed a lot of that along, and AI can help you with the writing of making something sound a more personal, kind, respectful, can help you with your voice. And I’m just curious how you see that tool cropping up in the communications you get? I certainly do.
HEIDI ROIZEN: I do. I do. AI is a double-edged sword. AI is a tool. You can use it well or you can use it poorly. And I think that people use it poorly when they substitute their own effort and creativity for that of AI, and it will show in the result. I still do not think AI captures your unique human personality. Maybe it will in the future, but right now that is far afield. And that is the thing that I think we look for in communications from other people. The piece of advice I’ll give everybody about this is when you are sending any form of communication to get somebody to do something and you are in a competitive situation, you should think hard about what is everyone else going to say? What I need to say needs to be different because if I sound like the other 85 people who are all applying for this fellowship, I have just missed an opportunity to set myself apart.
CURT NICKISCH: I want to ask about people just early in their careers or entering the workforce now. A lot of people work remote full-time, doing their jobs from coffee shops often. Are you worried that workers are kind of missing out on those relationship-building skills that you get by working together in an office? The connections that you built early in your career that probably helped you out a lot later?
HEIDI ROIZEN: This is such a meaty and knotty topic, knotty with a K because remote work has had so many positives. I think it has had so many positives about releasing us from the geographical bounds. I think it has released us from some demographical bounds. I think there are so many positives with it, and particularly in the startup world, we often say that the best startups are about the best people, not about the best ideas. So there are many good things about it. But the downside is that isolation, that lack of human connection, that lack of serendipity in getting to know other people again as human beings first, their jobs second. We have lost a lot of that.
And I think that is something that every business leader needs to think about. How do I engender that with people when I have a remote first or a hybrid format? And how do I make sure that my hybrid citizens are not second class? I think it does frankly involve people getting on airplanes or driving in their cars once in a while to go be with other people. And I think that it means also being thoughtful about what does it mean to go be with other people? If it means that you’re just requiring people to come to an office and then sit on zoom all day long because half of the people aren’t in the office, that is not going to be a successful way to do this.
CURT NICKISCH: I read that one thing that you recommend to people trying to build their network and build relationships is controlled randomness. Can you explain that?
HEIDI ROIZEN: If you ask people about what were the most important turning points in your career? Almost never did they say, “Well, I read a hundred books and I made myself a list and I went and I did certain things that were prescribed and then my career changed.” Generally speaking, people’s life stories about their careers involve a lot of randomness. “I sat next to this person at a dinner. I sat next to this person on a plane. I met this person at a conference.” It’s that kind of stuff. And so there’s a lot of randomness, but just to say, “Well just go out and experience randomness.” You don’t necessarily want to just go talk to the 10 people in line at the Safeway with you. That may not be the right target rich environment.
CURT NICKISCH: It might.
HEIDI ROIZEN: If you’re in the Palo Alto, Safeway, maybe that is the case, but thinking about, “I don’t know who the individuals will be, but I know this particular event, this particular venue, this particular company, this particular educational institution is going to attract a group of interesting people.” The one thing none of us have any more of than anybody else is time and how to judiciously use your time is really, really important. But I think the problem is if we’re always only reactive, if we’re only replying, if we’re only responding, if we’re only doing the work that’s thrown at us, we’re never thinking about how to bring new things into our life.
And that’s where I think this idea of controlled randomness, “I’m going to go to a conference, I’m going to go to this conference because it attracts people in my industry, but who are a few years ahead of me. I am going to work with my trade association.” This is something I did in both the software industry and the venture capital industry because the trade associations tend to be in many cases some of the leadership of the industries that you are in. And frankly, a lot of people don’t go help trade associations because it’s working for free. But you can distinguish yourself if you actually do the work by getting to know the other people in your industry through that work.
And so that worked for me very well in both of the industry associations of the two big industries that I’ve been in. The other thing I think you can do is a lot of these sorts of things, you can get an attendee list in advance. And literally looking through the attendee list person by person and thinking, “Who would I most want to meet?” And not who’s the most important person in the room because everybody’s going to try to get to that person. But you really want to think about, “Who are the other people here rhyme with me in some way, that had my same undergraduate degree or that are in a company I want to work for or something like that.” And believe me, it’s really easy to walk up to someone and say, “I read the whole attendee list in advance and you’re one of the people I most wanted to meet.” That person’s going to talk to you.
CURT NICKISCH: So people are going to listen to this, and they’re going to turn around and be like, “I need to do a better job of building relationships, maintaining my network, getting back in touch with people who I think can be valuable or just people I care about.” They’re going to listen to the conversation. They’re going to have a little more motivation to sort of do it right and be consistent. What are the first couple of things that you would recommend they do just to get the ball rolling and turn this into a habit?
HEIDI ROIZEN: Well, the first thing to do is going back to that make yourself easy to find. Go look at your social media. Make sure it’s up-to-date. Make sure you’re properly reflected in wherever people are going to go to say, “Hey, I wonder what so-and-so is up to” when you reach out to people. I think the second thing is right size the outreach to whatever it is you want. Sometimes it’s just saying, “You popped into my head today. I haven’t talked to you in a year. I hope you’re doing well. If you want to catch up, let me know.” Just something like that. Just letting a person know “I thought about you today” is actually I think a very reasonable thing to do.
Another thing that I think is incredibly… I’ll just tell you this, it really works on me. It makes me really happy, is when I get an email from a former student or someone who used to work for me and they say, “I just want you to know that I just accepted this new job,” or I just got this promotion,” or “I just finished this project and part of the reason that it happened is because of something you said to me or something you did for me.” I think that there’s not enough gratitude in the world today. I think, again, this goes back to the everybody’s busy and it is time out of your day to proactively think, “Who should I thank for what today?”
And I don’t think this should be overly groveling or anything like that, but I do think, for example, I have a co-worker who looks at her calendar every Friday night. She looks back at all the meetings she had, and she thinks, “What should the follow-up be?” Even if the follow-up is just, “Thank you for taking the time.” And that is very powerful. It’s always interesting to me that entrepreneurs, they will come and pitch a firm and they were taking an hour of their time. They’re taking an hour of our time. And if we let them know that we’re not going to fund them. For some of them, it’s the last you ever hear of them. They literally just drop you. They ghost you.
Yet for others, they say, “Hey, we still want to thank you for taking the time. We learn some interesting things in the meeting,” or whatever. Just saying, “I appreciate that you took the time.” And then interestingly, when those people contact you six months later and they say, “Hey, in the meeting you said something about this company, could you maybe make a connection for me or something?” I’m going to be way more likely to do that than somebody who was unresponsive and then only reaches out to me when they want a transaction. Again, what defines the difference between those two things? One of them feels like a relationship. The other one feels like a transaction.
So I think that just starting simple, starting with a few exercises in gratitude, a few exercises in outreach. Again, it’s not about volume. It’s about the quality and consistency of what you do. And so starting small, I think is a… It should be the goal for everyone, right? The idea of reaching out to one person a day. Something I used to call aggressive hour. Take one hour a day that you set aside for not just doing what other people are asking you to do, but doing positive outreach that may not even have an immediate objective. In fact, I think in many ways it’s stronger if it’s not an immediate objective. Just to continue to build the connective tissue between you and the other people that you value.
CURT NICKISCH: Well, Heidi, this has been a really great conversation, so thanks so much for coming on the show to talk about it.
HEIDI ROIZEN: Well, thank you.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s Heidi Roizen, partner at Threshold Ventures and lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business. You can read more in the Harvard Business School case study titled Heidi Roizen. You can find it at HBR.org and in the episode notes.
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Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe, senior producer Anne Saini, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager Ian Fox and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. Thank you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back on Tuesday with our next episode. I’m Curt Nickisch.