This hack helped me 50x my network in 3 years

Or: the art of hosting

I’ll let you in on the hack right away: if you want to supercharge your network, host your own events. I definitely didn’t set out to host events, but this is where I’ve ended up, curating dinners and talks for brands and individuals across the world, and it’s somehow become my job. Read on for why you should host your own events if you want to grow your network, plus some easy tips and tricks that will allow you to run your very first event at the start of 2026.

I apologise for the clickbaity tech bro headline, but in this age of 10 second attention spans, we gotta do what we gotta do. I was thinking about what to title this, and then figured it had better be something I’d click on myself if I were scrolling my Substack timeline, and since I’m a fan of anything that lets me believe I can change my life easily, this is where we’ve landed.

Image via Pinterest of course

As with most good things in my life, I stumbled upon this hack by accident. Or maybe not, as Napoleon said: “there is no such thing as an accident; it is fate misnamed” (ew who do I think I am, quoting Napoleon). Anyway, a few years ago, in October 2022, I was on a train from Amsterdam to Paris, having a discussion with my friend Gemma with whom I have a bunch of mutual friends who are (very fabulous) influencers and content creators. We remarked on how many seemed to have been at a recent brand dinner hosted by a popular tech company, and how it was a shame that also-fabulous but non-influencer people like us didn’t get to go to those events. So, in the spirit of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress who once said “if they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair”, we decided to host our own dinner.

The joy of forgetting your ADHD meds

Luckily I had forgotten to take my ADHD meds that day (ironic), so I was in the mood to move fast. As the train pulled into Antwerp, we’d settled on a name for the event (Food for Thought, a name I’d come up with years earlier for a series of dinners I never got round to hosting). We landed on a date for a few weeks later, and picked Dishoom as our location: a crowd-pleaser of a restaurant in central London that’s easy for everyone to get to. By the time we were leaving Bruxelles Midi on the way to Paris, we’d booked a table for 14 people, made a shortlist of invitees, drafted an invitation email, and each sent it to a bunch of friends and connections we figured might be up for a slightly haphazard dinner with a group of similarly great people.

To be honest, as brand dinners tend to be 1) glamorous, 2) hosted by desirable brands, and 3) free, I didn’t expect to get so much interest in our first dinner. Almost everyone we initially reached out to accepted our invitation, and promptly paid for their seat to secure their spot. Within a few days, we’d sold out.

The dinner came and went, and we were once again blown away by the feedback. Connections were forged, friendships were initiated, and Instagram accounts were followed, and soon people were asking us when the next dinner would be. In the years since, we’ve thrown dinners and drinks events all over London, gathering everyone from venture capitalists and tech startup founders to artists, activists and journalists. What people say they love about the events is that they’re (supremely) laid back — we always end by 9pm latest, meaning people can get home and start Netflixing by 9.30pm. This has the added benefit of leaving people wanting more, rather than having a night that leaves them exhausted and hungover the next morning at work.

The path to world domination

After the success of our London dinners, I decided to start hosting in Amsterdam, where I have lived for most of my life. I joined forces with my friend Hannah who end up becoming my co-founder at Social Capital, the company we now run together. We repeated the same easy formula that Gemma and I had finessed in London:

• book a table at a fun and laid-back restaurant,

• calculate a rough price of a sharing meal based on the menu,

• send an invite to your guests,

• and enjoy the evening.

Again, we got amazing feedback. It seemed like people were really craving this kind of low-key networking that didn’t feel like networking, and the chance to meet likeminded people over a casual weeknight dinner. We rinsed and repeated across New York City, Berlin, Lisbon, Paris and Sydney, and still host regular dinners to this day. I keep track of my network in a series of messy Excels, and while I don’t know exact numbers, through hosting all of these events I’ve met 100s of amazing people in cities across the world. They work in all sorts of industries, and I’ve since connected with many of them for coffees, collaborations, and paid projects.

Even better, people message me all the time to update me on a friendship they’ve made through our dinners. Guests have ended up working together, travelling together, and even renting office spaces together, which I honestly find so cool.

The cold message I sent to a very cool woman in NYC on LinkedIn

Her response a few hours later!

Growing my network

So, how do we choose who we invite for each dinner? We go for casual curation, meaning people who are either in similar fields, or who have similar personalities, or who do complementary things. We try not to have direct competitors at the same table (say, two startup founders who do the exact same thing), and we aim for a good balance of nationalities and ages at each table. We don’t over-engineer it, in part because of my life philosophy that you can have an interesting conversation with literally every single person on the planet.

That said, I am of course a girlboss hustler at heart, so we also invite people from companies we’d love to work with one day. This is never with any expectation of immediate projects — it’s more to make sure we’re on their radar as and when they need support in the things we offer. Through our dinners, I’ve met and become friends with everyone from startups who’ve ended up hiring us for consultancy projects, founders who run brands we’ve since collaborated with, and a range of great people who work at companies like Google, TikTok, Pinterest, Reddit, Meta and Tesla.

Some of the amazing women we’ve had at our Food for Thought dinners

How to host your own event to 50x your network

1. Keep it low-lift

First things first, it needs to be easy. Our dinners only work because we keep them super low-lift. No matter how busy we are in a given quarter or month or week, we can always squeeze in a dinner, because now that we’ve perfected our approach, it’s very little work. The type of event that might fit into your life depends on what you enjoy attending as a participant, too. Consider everything from potluck dinners, to book clubs, to cocktail parties, to BBQs, to games nights, to afterwork drinks at a local bar.

2. Keep it simple

Once you’ve decided on the format, don’t overcomplicate things. If you’re doing a breakfast event, grab some croissants and juices from a local bakery — no need to cook fried eggs for 30 people. If you’re doing an afterwork drinks at a local bar, just book a table to start with. You don’t need to hire a venue or get a private room (in fact, definitely don’t do this until you know the concept works).

3. Be strategic with your guest list

If you’re a reader of this Substack, you’ll hopefully have come across the 100 Connections Challenge. Your self-hosted networking event is the perfect opportunity to invite a few people from your list. You’ll be able to tick off multiple connections at once, and start building deeper relationships with them. You’ll also benefit from the principle of reciprocity, because they’ll hopefully feel grateful that you invited them to such a fun event (no pressure).

The 100 Connections Challenge: how to change your life in 2026

You can also invite current and former colleagues, people you’ve met at other networking events, and also friends from your personal life who are aligned with the rest of the guests. Depending on your profile, you might also want to open the event to a wider audience by posting it on social media or listing it on Luma or Eventbrite as a public event.

4. Host a great event

A lot has been written on how to host a great event. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel: just follow these simple rules.

• Make sure everyone’s well-fed and well-hydrated (where appropriate, provide both alcoholic and non-alcoholic options).

• If you’re doing a dinner, make sure you’ve checked for allergies and dietary requirements.

• Introduce everyone at the start in a low-key way.

• Write or print some conversation cards for those silences — questions like “which celebrity would you add to your group chat?” work well.

• If you see someone standing or sitting alone, go and talk to them!

• Don’t be too prescriptive. It’s fine to create a plan of how you expect the evening to go, like changing seating arrangements halfway through, but if everyone’s enjoying chatting, there’s no need to artificially move them along.

• Send a thank you message afterwards, and if you’ve got permission ahead of time, share your attendees’ contact details.

You can keep trying new formats, too — just because one thing is working great, doesn’t mean you can’t trial another approach. After we’d hosted a number of dinners, I decided to throw an impromptu drinks party in Paris. I wanted to get to know more people in the city, and didn’t have time to keep meeting up with Bumble BFF or LinkedIn contacts 1:1. Instead, I decided to host an ultra relaxed drinks party at home, invited a bunch of people, and asked them all to bring a friend.

Funnily enough, I adapted the idea from Sex and the City, Season 3, Episode 2, where Charlotte throws a “used date party”. The idea is that everyone brings along someone they once dated unsuccessfully, in the hopes that they (and you) will have better luck with someone else’s used date. My platonic alternative worked well — the bring a friend approach made it less intimidating for my guests, introduced everyone (including me) to more great people, and immediately doubled my attendee list without me having to do anything.

One of my hobbies is seeing how often I can mention Sex and the City in my work. It’s worryingly often

Why this works

First of all, it’s fun. Given that networking is an inevitable part of work life, especially when you work for yourself, you might as well be chatting over a ruby chicken and gunpowder potatoes at Dishoom, rather than dry canapés at a networking conference at the Hilton.

It’s highly adaptable. The type of events we throw shift depending on the season, our capacity, and our work goals. Every time I’ve moved to a new country (which is often — I can’t sit still), I throw a bunch of dinners to get to know people, and I have to say it works really well. When we have more time, I love planning a bigger panel event, or something with sponsored brands. I also love a collaboration event. Last year, we hosted a party in Berlin with Twin City, our friends who run a home-swap platform for creatives. That was great because we could split the cost of the venue and drinks, did half the work of organising, and got introduced to each other’s networks. This is something we really want to focus on for 2026, in part because less work and more fun.

You’re the centre of attention. I don’t mean this in a narcissistic way, but look at it this way. If you’re a guest at a dinner or a drinks party, you only get to meet the people you’re sitting next to, or the people you happen to chat to, which could be 20% of the attendees. If you’re hosting, on the other hand, everyone comes to find you when they arrive and leave, and you become the central point of contact for them. This means you get to talk to and build relationships with a number of great people, without having to have separate individual conversations with each one.

You can promote your business. Your focus should obviously be on hosting a great event, but this is definitely an added benefit. Depending on the vibe, you can do a little speech at the start of the event, introducing yourself and explaining what your business does (it’s like a sales call with a captive audience). You can also give out merch, or put your logo on your menus or conversation cards.

Your guests are grateful. People always thank us for inviting them to our events, which is very nice, but really we’re very grateful to them for 1) choosing to come, and 2) paying to be there. A great side-effect of hosting events is that people feel warmly towards you, because they’re happy to be invited, and hopefully have great memories of the time they spent there. This will come in handy later on if you ever need to ask for a favour, like an intro to someone at a company you want to work with.

Another benefit of hosting events is spending d hours on Pinterest for “research”

Challenge: plan an event for Q1 2026

So, how can you apply this for yourself? Whatever your goals — sales, more freelance projects, making new friends, testing your startup concept — there’s an event you could host to help you get there. It doesn’t need to be expensive either (remember, we charge our guests for our dinners, and we never aim to make a profit, but we do ensure we don’t end up out of pocket). It also doesn’t need to be huge: a small dinner or breakfast with 6 likeminded people is a great start. Have a think about the kind of event you might want to throw, and plan a trial for January or February. Make sure you let me know how it goes!

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On the Social Currency Substack, we unpack the art (and science) of connection: from who to meet and how to meet them, to building your own ecosystem and creating those right-place-right-time moments that spark opportunity, whatever your goals in work of life. Expect interviews with people who do it best, practical hacks you can put to work immediately, and recommendations on tools, events, and strategies to grow your own network. You can find Phoebe at the imaginatively named phoebedodds.com.