Proximity, Identity, and Opportunity

i'm writing this from seattle-tacoma international on a six hour layover, 2,782 miles from school. you get a lot of thinking done in an airport. mostly about the strangers walking past you, all of them headed somewhere, none of them people you'll ever talk to.

shared experience is the fastest introduction there is. that's why colleges push the four year program, so everyone walks away with the same "experience." the diploma itself doesn't mean anything. it's the shared memory underneath it, lighting the torches, drinking from the old well, whatever weird quirky tradition your school has, that makes two strangers into something closer to friends the moment they realize they both have it.

it's a widely shared idea that you become the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. i believe that. those five people shape your habits, your values, who you are day to day.

i believe there's a second, less talked about number that matters just as much, and it's not about who you become. it's about what you can access.

linkedin popularized the phrase "500+ connections." for a while i thought that number was an arbitrary cap someone picked. it led me to think about the six degrees of separation. the theory that you're connected to almost anyone on earth through six social links. a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend can introduce you to absolutely anyone.

that's a crazy theory. it's also useless on its own. theoretical reach doesn’t actually mean anything. knowing that you're six links from the president doesn't get you a meeting. six degrees proves connection is technically infinite. it says nothing about which six people you'd actually need, or whether any of them would pick up the phone for you.

that's where curation comes in.

metropolitan cities have always pulled in the most ambitious, driven people around, artists, scholars, and yeah, unfortunately, consultants. in a city of 8 million, the thrill of waking up is that you could meet someone who changes your life today. but the odds you spill your coffee on that person are basically zero. density alone doesn't create connection. it just creates a lot of people you'll never be introduced to.

so you curate. you build a network the same way you built friendships at school, on purpose, around shared context. that same spark you get from "wait, you know Tim too?" is available anywhere, if you're deliberate about who's in your orbit. It adds something a warm memory alone can't, a stamp of credibility.

if your network is 500 people in one city, and each of them has 250 unique connections of their own, that's a reach of over 125,000 people on a first name basis, or close enough to it. but it isn’t about meeting 125,000 people. nobody's doing that. it's a reflection of how many rooms you can get into because someone already vouched for you before you walked in.

that's the piece the big 5 idea misses. your five closest people shape you, but they can only open the doors they already have access to. the other 500 are how you get into doors your five have never even seen. one gives you identity. the other gives you access. both are important, but almost nobody optimizes for the second one on purpose.

especially in tech and finance, this matters more than people want to admit. coffee chats are a little cringe, sure. but face to face is still the only real way to build a connection that holds up later. the linkedin checkmark is just a receipt for something that already happened in person.

some of the people who've influenced me most never set foot in my world. filmmaking, coding, building. it's on you to look at the work and life around you and figure out how it applies to yours. the same goes for people. you don't need someone in your exact lane to vouch for you in a way that matters.

so yeah, the big 5 is important. i'm not arguing against that. it’s just incomplete. imagine having 500 people who could put a seal of approval on you, and the doors that opens that your five never could.

one more thing: colgate alumni, seattle tech people, or anyone else who stumbled onto this, let's connect. i'd love to offer my stamp of approval.