I Had No Network. Here’s How I Built One That Actually Opened Doors.
Aaron Dancel6 min read·Just now--
By Aaron Dancel
Nobody handed me a Rolodex.
When I was starting out, I didn’t have a well-connected uncle in finance or a college roommate who worked at a bulge bracket firm. I didn’t go to a school with a legendary alumni network. What I had was ambition, a genuine curiosity about how businesses actually work, and the slow, humbling realization that in this world — especially in private equity and deal-making — who you know is not just a cliché. It’s infrastructure.
Building Atlantis Trident Equity Ventures from the ground up with my partners forced me to confront something I had been avoiding for years: I needed to learn how to network. Not the performative kind — collecting LinkedIn connections like baseball cards — but real, durable, reciprocal professional relationships. The kind where someone actually picks up the phone when you call.
Here’s what I learned.
Start With What You Have, Not What You Wish You Had
I used to waste energy comparing my network to the networks of people who seemed to already be somewhere. That’s a trap.
The first real shift came when I stopped asking “Who do I need to know?” and started asking “Who do I already know that I’ve underestimated?”
Former colleagues. Old clients. People I’d worked alongside during earlier chapters of my career — the ones you keep meaning to reach back out to but never do. These aren’t warm leads. They’re warm relationships that you’ve simply let go cold. Re-engaging them is not manipulation; it’s maintenance. And those conversations often surfaced introductions and opportunities I never expected.
Your first-degree network is almost always richer than you think. Mine was.
Bring Something to the Table Before You Ask for Anything
This is the one rule I’d tattoo on the inside of every aspiring dealmaker’s wrist if I could.
The biggest mistake I see — especially from people newer to building professional relationships — is leading with the ask. “Can I pick your brain?” “Can you introduce me to so-and-so?” “Can you take a look at our deck?”
Before I ever approached someone with a request, I made it a discipline to bring them something first. An article I thought would genuinely interest them. A connection that made sense for their work. A piece of information relevant to a deal they’d mentioned publicly. Something that said: I’m paying attention. I’m thoughtful. I’m not just here to extract value from you.
When I started doing this consistently, the dynamic of every professional conversation shifted. I wasn’t a supplicant anymore. I was a peer.
Show Up Where the Right People Are
A lot of networking advice tells you to go to events. That’s incomplete. The better advice is to go to the right events — and then go consistently enough that you stop being a stranger.
The people I’ve built the deepest professional relationships with weren’t met at one-off conferences. They were met at recurring gatherings: industry working groups, small dinners, roundtables. Places where the same faces cycle through over months and years. Places where relationships have room to compound.
I also learned to look beyond the obvious venues. Some of my most valuable professional connections came from showing up in spaces adjacent to the work I was doing — not just finance forums, but operational leadership circles, founder communities, even industry-specific associations I never would have considered relevant.
Cross-pollinate. The most interesting people often aren’t where you’d expect to find them.
I can give you a concrete example of this — one I didn’t see coming at all.
The Hobby That Opened More Doors Than Any Conference
A couple of years ago, I picked up equestrian riding.
It wasn’t a calculated networking move. I genuinely wanted to learn something difficult, something that had nothing to do with spreadsheets or deal flow. I wanted a place where I was a complete beginner — humbled, focused, outside my comfort zone. Riding gave me that.
What I didn’t expect was who I’d meet at the stables.
Equestrian communities, especially in the circles I started moving in, draw a particular kind of person: disciplined, patient, comfortable with long time horizons, often quietly accomplished. These aren’t people who announce themselves at industry events. They’re people who show up every weekend, care for their horses, and build relationships the same way they ride — steadily, with attention to detail.
Within a year of riding consistently, I had developed genuine friendships with a family office principal, two founders who had successfully exited their companies, and a seasoned operator who later became an informal advisor to Atlantis Trident. None of these connections came through LinkedIn. None of them started with a pitch. They started with early mornings, shared frustrations about getting the canter transition right, and the kind of easy conversation that happens when you’re both focused on something other than business.
That’s the thing about hobbies that attract serious people: the relationship forms first, around something real. The professional dimension comes later, naturally, because trust is already there.
I’m not suggesting you take up riding specifically. But I am suggesting that whatever you’re genuinely curious about — pursue it. Pursue it in rooms with other people. The network that emerges from shared passion is sturdier than anything you’ll build at a mixer.
Follow Up Like It’s Your Job. Because It Is.
I cannot overstate this: the difference between a conversation and a relationship is follow-up.
After every meaningful interaction, I built a habit. Same day, if possible — definitely within 24 hours. A short message. Something specific to what we talked about. Not a template. Not a generic “great to meet you.” A sentence or two that proved I was actually present in the conversation.
This habit, more than anything else, separated me from the noise. Most people don’t follow up. Or if they do, they do it once and move on. The ones who follow through consistently — who resurface with something relevant months later, who remember what you told them, who treat a relationship as something to be tended — those are the people everyone wants to stay close to.
Be that person.
Give Referrals Freely and Gratefully Accept Them
One of the fastest ways to build credibility in any professional ecosystem is to become someone who connects people well. When you introduce two people who genuinely should know each other — and that introduction creates value for both of them — they both think better of you. You’ve just demonstrated judgment.
At Atlantis Trident, some of our most productive relationships emerged not from direct outreach, but from referrals inside a network I’d spent years cultivating. A trusted contact who vouched for us opened a door no cold email ever could.
And when someone refers you? Honor that. Make the person who vouched for you look good. That’s the flywheel.
Be Patient. Networks Aren’t Built. They’re Grown.
The hardest lesson, honestly, is the one nobody wants to hear: this takes time.
I didn’t build the network that enables my work today in a year. It was the accumulation of hundreds of small interactions, maintained relationships, referrals given and received, follow-up emails, coffees, calls, dinners, and moments of just being genuinely interested in other people and what they were building.
There’s no shortcut that works at scale. There are only habits, practiced consistently, over a long period of time.
If you’re starting from zero today — good. That’s exactly where I started. Just start.
Aaron Dancel is a co-founder and Managing Partner at Atlantis Trident Equity Ventures, a private equity firm focused on operational value creation across growth-stage companies.
