How I made friends in 50+ countries without chasing people

When I moved to Europe 4 years ago, I had to rebuild my list of professional contacts from scratch. I was working in fintech and was interested in switching to web3, which is an industry where everyone already knows each other, and they all met at a conference you weren't invited to.

So I had to figure out how people actually build real relationships from a cold start. It took about two years. Here's what I learned.

The first thing I had to unlearn: the word "networking" itself.

Networking implies a transaction. I give you a business card, you give me an opportunity. We both pretend this is a human interaction. It's a vending machine with small talk.

The people I built real relationships with — founders, protocol leads, community builders — none of those started with "networking." They started with me being genuinely useful, genuinely curious, or funny.

For example, I met the father of Vitalik Buterin, the co-inventor of Ethereum, at the Devcon conference in Bangkok. Dima Buterin is an open-minded person who smells fake a mile away. We just had a genuine talk, which became the basis for a connection. A year later, he came to my podcast as a guest and shared insights about Ethereum and his motivation to support Ukraine. I recommend that you to watch this conversation by the link in the description.

Speaking of the podcast, it was my strategic action. I needed more people to know and learn from, so I started Decentralized Voices.

A podcast is the only format where you can email a stranger you admire, ask them to talk for an hour, and they say yes.

If I'd sent those same people "can I pick your brain over coffee," maybe ten percent would respond. But "I'd love to have you as a guest on my podcast" — that's a completely different proposition. You're offering a platform, not asking for a favor.

Three seasons and seventy episodes later, I have real relationships with people across the Ethereum Foundation, Matter Labs, OKX, Centrifuge, and many others. Because I spent an hour asking questions I actually cared about, and that creates a bond no conference badge ever will.

The podcast was a networking strategy disguised as a content project. Or a content project that accidentally became a big part of my professional network. I honestly can't tell the difference anymore.

The point: I didn't wait for access. I created a context where access made sense.

The podcast taught me a principle I've used for everything since: if you're not being invited to the room, build the room.

When I moved to Poland, there was no SheFi community locally. So I started the chapter from nothing. Organized events. Got sponsors — Stellar, ENS DAO. Partnered with five other communities. The result: events three times overbooked, over 150,000 in reach, a community that became a benchmark for similar chapters globally.

I also joined the ETHWarsaw organizing team to help with communications targeting developers and well-known blockchain brands. ETHWarsaw was one of the biggest Ethereum conferences in Europe, and being part of the team helped me meet great people from different countries.

None of this happened because I was well-connected. It happened because I was willing to do the organizational work that well-connected people don't want to do.

The people who build communities end up at the center of them. Because they showed up and did the logistics. Booked the venue. Wrote the follow-up emails. Remembered people's names.

Conferences are where people burn the most energy with the least return.

The standard playbook: fly in, collect badges, hover near important people, take a selfie with a speaker, post it on LinkedIn and X, and fly home. You've spent minimum two thousand euros to be briefly adjacent to relevance.

What I do instead: Before the event, I pick two or three people I actually want to know. Not the headliners — the mid-tier speakers, the panelists, the community leads. At the conference, I have a real conversation. I never chase headliners to take a selfie when they hurry up away from the stage. I've never understood why spending time on a "superstar" who would forget you in 3 seconds instead of meeting people who can have a deep chat and make friends with you.

And pro tip: apply to speak. Once you're on stage, the dynamic flips. People come to you. The "networking" happens passively because you've changed your position in the room.

I went from knowing no one at my first global tech conference to speaking at EthCC in Cannes within two years. I always raise my hand if it makes sense to my personal and career development.

I want to be honest about something, because the framework part is useful but incomplete.

Making real friends in a new country, in a new industry, takes a long time. Most of that time feels like nothing is happening. You go to events and leave feeling more alone than before. You have coffee with people who never follow up. You wonder if everyone else just already has their people.

They do.

And if there is no big brand behind you, you'd struggle more. When I started attending blockchain and tech conferences, my fintech ex-employer’s name meant nothing to the majority of attendees. If you work at Coinbase, Robinhood, or Anthropic, your social status automatically switches to "amazing person, must follow." If you don't have this leverage, you must work more.

But this leverage can be lost in one day. The recent layoffs in top companies show that many "tier 1" people, in fact, don't have a good network to be hired fast and without friction.

The relationships that actually stuck — the ones I have now, the people I genuinely call friends — all started somewhere around month eight or ten of me just consistently showing up. I'm still grateful to people whom I met at the beginning of this path and who were welcoming, kind, and genuine.

If I had to compress these years of building from zero into one line, stop trying to meet people. Start giving people a reason to meet you.

Build something: a product, a podcast, a community, an event, a newsletter that puts you at the center of a conversation you care about. Then keep showing up long enough for the relationships to become real.

It's slow. It's unsexy. And it's the only thing that actually works.

I started with posts on LinkedIn and videos that didn't get many views. Now I know people in more than fifty countries, and some of them are my true friends.

Your starting point doesn't matter. Your will and consistency do most of the work.