common assumption that we get the most help from our strong ties, Granovetter surveyed people in
professional, technical, and managerial professions who had recently changed jobs. Nearly 17
percent heard about the job from a strong tie. Their friends and trusted colleagues gave them plenty of
leads.
But surprisingly, people were significantly more likely to benefit from weak ties. Almost 28
percent heard about the job from a weak tie. Strong ties provide bonds, but weak ties serve as
bridges: they provide more efficient access to new information. Our strong ties tend to travel in the
same social circles and know about the same opportunities as we do. Weak ties are more likely to
open up access to a different network, facilitating the discovery of original leads.
Here’s the wrinkle: it’s tough to ask weak ties for help. Although they’re the faster route to new
leads, we don’t always feel comfortable reaching out to them. The lack of mutual trust between
acquaintances creates a psychological barrier. But givers like Adam Rifkin have discovered a
loophole. It’s possible to get the best of both worlds: the trust of strong ties coupled with the novel
information of weak ties.
The key is reconnecting, and it’s a major reason why givers succeed in the long run.
After Rifkin created the punk rock links on the Green Day site for Spencer in 1994, Excite took
off, and Rifkin went back to graduate school. They lost touch for five years. When Rifkin was moving
to Silicon Valley, he dug up the old e-mail chain and drafted a note to Spencer. “You may not
remember me from five years ago; I’m the guy who made the change to the Green Day website,”
Rifkin wrote. “I’m starting a company and moving to Silicon Valley, and I don’t know a lot of people.
Would you be willing to meet with me and offer advice?”
Rifkin wasn’t being a matcher. When he originally helped Spencer, he did it with no strings
attached, never intending to call in a favor. But five years later, when he needed help, he reached out
with a genuine request. Spencer was glad to help, and they met up for coffee. “I still pictured him as
this huge guy with a Mohawk,” Rifkin says. “When I met him in person, he hardly said any words at
all. He was even more introverted than I am.” By the second meeting, Spencer was introducing Rifkin
to a venture capitalist. “A completely random set of events that happened in 1994 led to reengaging
with him over e-mail in 1999, which led to my company getting founded in 2000,” Rifkin recalls.
“Givers get lucky.”
Yet there’s reason to believe that part of what Rifkin calls luck is in fact a predictable, patterned
response that most people have to givers. Thirty years ago, the sociologist Fred Goldner wrote about
what it means to experience the opposite of paranoia: pronoia. According to the distinguished
psychologist Brian Little, pronoia is “the delusional belief that other people are plotting your well-
being, or saying nice things about you behind your back.”
If you’re a giver, this belief may be a reality, not a delusion. What if other people are actually
plotting the success of givers like Adam Rifkin?
In 2005, when Rifkin was starting Renkoo with Joyce Park, they didn’t have any office space, so
they were working out of Rifkin’s kitchen. A colleague went out of his way to introduce Rifkin to
Reid Hoffman, who had recently founded LinkedIn, which had fewer than fifty employees at the time.
Hoffman met up with Rifkin and Park on a Sunday and offered them free desks at LinkedIn, putting
Rifkin in the heart of Silicon Valley. “In the summer of 2005, one of the companies right next to us
was YouTube, and we got to meet them in their infancy before they really took off,” Rifkin says.
Rifkin’s experience sheds new light on the old saying that what goes around comes around. These
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