Altman's Personal Networking

Codie shares a story about how she built relationships with successful people by using personalized gifts and outreach.

"One of the ways I met Sam originally - I liked one of his articles he wrote in The Hustle years ago. I did some research on Sam and thought 'I think he's going to do some stuff.' The Hustle was small at the time, but I wanted him in my rolodex.

I found out his favorite candy was Butterfingers, so I shipped him this ludicrous sized box of Butterfingers. He didn't have many choices except to call me back and say thanks. I did something similar with Noah Kagan, but with tacos because that was his thing, and I sent him a shirt.

The whole point was that people say 'Oh, you have this huge network, of course you could raise a fund this way.' But I didn't have any of that at the time. I was in finance, we couldn't even have social media. I think those are all excuses. Instead, you should get obsessed with people you think are interesting, find ways to connect with them. You can even do it in an old school manner, which might work better today than ever because DMs and social media are inundated."