Q1.What general networking principles does Heidi Roizen follow?

Heidi Roizen was a networking genius who managed to build deep and broad connections over

the years. She followed the “Proximity Principle” for network building to get the contact for a

looked-for job of newsletter editor at Tandem by fetching her prevailing network of friends. She

managed to forge a strong relationship with the CEO due frequent interactions at work, board

meetings and developed good working relationships with the people she frequently worked with.

She also preached the “Self-Similarity Principle” something that helped her land into the Tandem

job, by hitting it off with the hiring manager. Even during her years at T maker, she attended

numerous conferences and events where she interacted with likeminded people. She also joined

some well know groups in the technology and entrepreneurial space where she could interact with

of one mind individuals. Lastly, she also tailed the “Shared-Activity Principle” which was seen

when she was working on T maker and she needed to publicize her product to compete with the

bigger players she developed her network within the press who could generate content by

reviewing her product. It was a mutually beneficial association for Heidi and the press group. She

also had the mixed personal and professional network which she leveraged through shared

activities ,like incidental encounter at gym, to expand her network

Q2.What specific behaviors led to her current network? How were ties formed? Maintained?

The behaviors and belief that helped Heidi form her current network and maintain it are:

1. Performance: As a mentor capitalist and venture capitalist, she constantly had several people

from her network contacting her for advice, for career opportunities and so on. She made it a point

to respond to every email and call irrespective of how busy she was. She leveraged every
opportunity to help her network out by acting as a broker whenever she found a win-win situation

for both the parties. In Apple, she maintained confidentiality and neutrality in her discussions,

which helped soften the bitter relationship between Apple and Microsoft.

2. Consistency :Heidi was consistent in maintaining her relationships with her network. Small

actions like emailing someone a day after she had met the individual, being mindful of her

network’s time when she was asking for a favor and so on went a long way in maintaining her

network. She frequently held dinner parties where she consciously invited people who could

benefit out of interacting with each other and build network for herself and for others.

3. Access to People: Her ties were formed due to her broker network approach, she tried to include

nuclei of another network and connected through this constellation system. She created ties with

“smart” and “interesting” people which later became senior leaders in their journey. Her trusts in

consistency, reciprocity and quality of the interaction led her to maintain the network

Q3.What are the strengths of Heidi Roizen’s networks? Weaknesses?

Heidi Roizen huge web of network had both positive and negative repercussions on her.

The strengths of her network were that it involved interactions with big business leaders and

executives including CEOs. Networking helped her possess a great bunch of career options where

she could explore her interests. She considered networking as her business which proved out to be

credible, rather than what the usual mob does of using networking for the business. She was looked

as a celebrity in the Silicon Valley due to her diverse networking skills. She is very energetic,

amicable, confident, open to experience and efficient which led to adding real values to her work

and building robust and long-lasting relationship. She acted like a nucleus in her own network
and close to nuclei in another network, thus played the role of a broker. The approach to blend the

professional and personal network added to the networking structure she had created. Her belief

of paying more heed and focusing on the “Win-Win” relationship acted like the icing on the cake

to the asset of her networking reign.

The flip-side of her networking style, was that she had to devote a good amount of time in sending

out the reject mails to people. These rejection of the projects from her acquaintance would

negatively impact her personal/professional relationship with them. The large network will have

huge expectations from her and chances of satisfying everyone might be bleak and scarce. It might

escalate an internal conflict for deviating from her philosophy of helping others. The overburden

of work and commitment to networking has distressed the personal life to a great extent and might

impact the time she used to spend with family and frequency of the parties hosted by her.

Q4.What would you suggest Roizen do differently to succeed as a venture capitalist?

To succeed as a venture capitalist, Roizen can plan to take the following steps:

 Roizen can restructure her work by assigning the preliminary inspection process of the

business plan to other executives and focusing her time on providing better solutions

 She can leverage social media platform to use self-similarity principle and attract

entrepreneurs whose thinking are in line with hers, speeding up on important networks

 She could reduce the commitment from 80% to 50% and invest the 50% with her network

 She can keep aside a regular networking time and maintain a networking schedule or

calendar which can help her keep track of the time and activity she should prioritize

 She could try to eliminate some of the farthest relationships which might not turn out to

be fruitful in future, which might reduce the amount of emails she has to deal with daily