I started my MBA at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in 2019. One of the first classes I took was Organizational Behavior, and that is where I first learned about Heidi Roizen. Heidi is a partner at Threshold Ventures and the subject of a Harvard Business School case on building a business network that has been taught for over 20 years.

At the time, I was asked to write about what I thought her biggest strengths were. This is what I came up with:

  1. Developer: She sees potential in people and tries to get to know them and form relationships before they have become famous or well established. She helps people meet other interesting people and makes introductions that benefit both parties. This is invaluable for those who are new to the scene or have potential but lack sponsors who can help them reach it.

  2. Individualization: She clearly knows what people prefer and how to approach them when asking for help. She does not just forward every request she receives to people in her network. She helps craft the request in a way that is effective and actionable. She is also mindful about not going to the same person too often, and about only asking for things that make sense given where the person is.

  3. Communication: She has a system for communication. She believes in quality over quantity and is clear that consistency matters more than frequency. And performance matters most of all: do what you said you would do.

  4. Consistency: Beyond her communication habits, there is another example of her consistency in how she played a big role in getting SoftBank to document their investment criteria. This was a significant step in creating consistency in how deals were funded and how potential investments were evaluated before being presented internally.

  5. Arranger: She made things happen. She found the right people for the right roles. After joining SoftBank, she had a bigger role in helping people in her network find the right opportunities, often referring them to portfolio companies rather than elsewhere in the valley.

The professor, Dr. Wayne Baker, encouraged us to reach out to her on LinkedIn with a note introducing ourselves. I did, and she accepted. That felt great. I have not had many meaningful interactions with her since, because I always felt I had nothing substantial to send her way or ask her advice on. But I have enjoyed following her posts and watching how she engages with people over the years.

I recently came across a podcast episode where she makes the case for a relationship-driven life, on a podcast called The Startup Solution. What follows are the key ideas from the episode, distilled into the advice that matters most.

Reframe Networking as Relationship Building

Heidi starts by rejecting the framing of “business networking” entirely. Networking sounds transactional: using people to get to your next deal or job. She prefers to think of it as building a relationship-driven life, where the people matter more than any individual transaction.

The distinction is not just semantic. A transaction-driven mindset optimizes for the immediate outcome. A relationship-driven mindset optimizes for the long term. And if you believe that happiness comes down to meaningful work and meaningful relationships, then this is not just career advice. It is a way of living.

Make Yourself Easy to Find

At a minimum, present yourself well on LinkedIn. For those earlier in their careers, put your LinkedIn profile link in your email signature. Knowing more about you should be one click away for anyone you interact with. If you use social media, let it reflect who you are, but be careful that the shine does not turn into a dumpster fire.

Do Your Homework Before Meeting Someone New

It is surprising how many people show up to a meeting or interview without having learned a single thing about the person across the table. This is a missed opportunity. When someone starts a conversation by referencing something specific you have done or said, it tells you they cared enough to prepare. It is not about ego-stroking. It is about finding a starting point for a human connection, and that is much easier when you have done a little research ahead of time.

Make Yourself Easy to Help

People generally want to be helpful. But even the most helpful people are busy. The mistake most people make when asking for help is minimizing their own effort when articulating the request. What they should do instead is spend a bit more of their own time to minimize the effort required by the helper.

Heidi gives a concrete example. Say a VC offers to introduce you to three other investors by email and asks you to send something forwardable. The wrong move is to send one email naming all three firms with a pile of attachments and no elevator pitch. That email is not actionable. The VC now has to write three separate emails, craft the pitch, and figure out which attachments are appropriate. It will sit at the bottom of their inbox or never get done.

The right move is to send four emails. The first says “I have sent three emails tailored for each person, ready for you to forward.” The next three are personalized to each investor, explaining specifically why that person or firm is a great fit. Even though there are four emails instead of one, the VC can handle all of them in about a minute. That is often the difference between help that happens and help that does not.

Lead with Your Humanity

We are all people first, our jobs second. Everyone has bad days, personal problems, and moments when they are not at their best. Acknowledging that and treating each other with kindness makes everything work better.

Heidi shares two stories. In one, she showed up to a meeting in Seattle right after dropping her kid at college, visibly emotional. The entrepreneur ignored it completely, opened his laptop, and said “let’s get started.” In that moment, she knew she did not want to spend five years working with him.

In the other, a pitch meeting was scheduled for September 12, 2001, the day after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The entrepreneurs, stranded in the Bay Area because all flights were grounded, showed up and said: “It is hard to focus on business when we are all in shock. Let’s just have a coffee and do this another day.” They did not end up getting funded by Heidi’s firm, but the firm connected them to other VCs because of how they showed up that day, and one of those VCs did invest.

How you show up as a person matters, especially when you are asking someone to commit to working with you for years.

Practice Controlled Randomness

Put yourself in situations where you do not know exactly who you will meet, but the odds are good given who else is likely to be there. Heidi does this through the fellowship she teaches at Stanford. She does not know who the twelve fellows will be each year, but she knows Stanford selects them from 80 to 100 applicants, so by the time they make the cut, they are going to be interesting people.

The key word is “controlled.” Be thoughtful about which events, conferences, or gatherings are target-rich environments. If you can get the attendee list in advance, look through it and figure out who you would most like to meet. A great conversation starter is: “I looked through all the attendees and you were one of the people I most wanted to meet, because…” But do not target the highest-profile person. That is what everyone else will be doing. It is about meeting interesting fellow travelers, and you will have better success if you are not competing with every other person in the room for the same introduction.

Negotiation Is Finding Mutual Need

Heidi learned this in business school in the 1980s, the era of corporate greed and Gordon Gekko. Her negotiation professor defined it this way: “Negotiation is the art of finding the maximal intersection of mutual need.”

This means not entering a negotiation with only what you want in mind, fighting for it, and not caring what the other person gets. When you work on maximizing the fulfillment of mutual needs, you end up with better outcomes for yourself over time and better relationships with people you will likely encounter again.

One practical technique: do not start with “here is what I want.” Start with “here is the problem I am trying to solve.” It puts both parties into a collaborative problem-solving mindset. You may be surprised that the other person has creative solutions you never would have thought of. And when you ask them “what problem are you trying to solve?” you change the dynamic from adversarial to collaborative.

Not all negotiations can be collaborative, and not all problems can be solved. But even when this approach does not work perfectly, it creates more connection and empathy between the people involved, which tends to pay off later.

Assume Good Intent

If you assume bad intent, almost anything can be interpreted as an affront. That is not a good way to build a relationship. If you go in with the mindset of mutual good intent and then encounter behavior that does not match, ask yourself if there might be a reasonable explanation: pressures, crises, or a bad day that the person might be facing.

Some people do have bad intent, and Heidi is not suggesting you be a pushover. She is suggesting you start from the assumption of good intent until proven otherwise. The next time you are on a customer service call, try treating the other person as a mutually respected human being. You might be surprised at how much better it goes.

Say Thank You

This is the simplest piece of advice and the one most often overlooked. Acknowledging what someone did for you feels great for the recipient, and it uplifts the giver too. It does not need to be fancy. A quick email will do. Some of the most meaningful messages Heidi receives are from students she had five or ten years ago, telling her that a piece of advice changed the course of their career.

The Reframe

When you shift the goal from networking to building relationships, and you do it in the ways described here, there is nothing transactional about it. Thinking and living this way makes you a better, happier person. And the thing that makes it powerful is that it also ends up being better for your work life than optimizing for each individual transaction.

References