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Farming People

My day job used to involve staring at lines of code in VSCode. Now it mostly involves staring at Airtables full of people.

  • Examples of people farming:
    • Fundraising (Manifold seed round)
    • Event organizing (Manifest, Mexifold)
    • More passively: Manifund regranting program
  • Applying automation to people
    • Important sanity tip: batch your comms, otherwise you end up interrupt-driven
    • Speccing out a process? (Write up a guide to execute for myself)
    • Every so often, sit down and dump out a bunch of names somewhere
    • Software:
      • Dex - Anki-like
      • Airtable/Notion
  • How to bootstrap a network
  • Value of network
    • Especially good to maintain a social network (Manifold, Discord community) so people talk to each other, and you’re less of a central hub/bottleneck
      • Curating a network: call out good examples; kick out bad ones if necessary
        • Tip: Kudos channel to call out good work
  • Network maintenance
    • Servicing: reach out for 1:1s with people. This is the best way of actually keeping up with connections!
    • People appreciate invites to things (parties, retreats, conferences). So hosting one is a good excuse to reach out!
      • Tip: Always have a thing to invite people to. Upcoming dinner, retreat, conference