Hello! 👋
It’s Thursday, 22nd January 2026. Welcome back to Bold Efforts. Quick note before we get into it.
Thank you to everyone who tried Fursa this week and told me what felt off. Some of the sharpest feedback came from people who spent less than five minutes on the product, which is exactly how real users behave.
And we have a real milestone now. On Monday, 26 January, Fursa goes live with real jobs. Not test inventory. Real roles indexed straight from employer career pages, kept current, and linked out to the company site to apply.
Ok. Now the uncomfortable topic. Networking events.
A few years ago, I walked into one of those hotel ballroom networking events in Dubai where the carpet is louder than the people. The lighting was too bright for honest conversations. The coffee tasted like it had been reheated twice. Everyone wore the same expression, half hungry, half cautious, with name tags placed just high enough to force eye contact.
Within five minutes i had already said my “what I do” line three times. Not because I loved repeating it, but because the room demanded it. You know the script: where are you based, what are you working on, oh interesting, we should grab coffee. You trade numbers, connect on LinkedIn, and move on. The room becomes a conveyor belt.
Later that night you get home with a strange satisfaction in your body. A tiredness that feels earned. You showed up. You were out there. And then you wake up the next morning, open your laptop, and nothing has changed. No problem got solved, no decision got made, no work got shipped. Just a longer list of people who now vaguely remember your face. That was the last “networking” event I attended.
That gap is the point of this issue.
Networking events are one of the cleanest ways i know to mistake motion for action. Motion is activity that protects you from being judged. Action is activity that invites judgment. A networking event rewards motion because you can spend three hours there and nobody, including you, can tell whether it “worked.” It’s effort without a scoreboard, and that’s why it feels safe.
Action is cruel in comparison. Action ends with something you can point to. A shipped feature. A customer conversation that leads to a yes or a no. A message with a clear ask. A piece of writing that can be ignored. A product that can be rejected. Action forces a verdict.
This is why ambitious people overuse networking events when they’re stuck. The room gives you the emotional payoff of progress without the risk of progress. And yes, sometimes it pays off. That’s what makes it addictive. You meet someone who changes your trajectory, or someone who introduces you to someone who introduces you to someone. Your brain starts treating every event like a slot machine. Most nights you get nothing, but the occasional win keeps you feeding the machine.
Here’s a line I’ve learned to say to myself before I RSVP: If I come back from this event and nothing changes in my work next week, would I still go. Is there really something that is not there on the internet that this event would give me? Most of the time, the honest answer is no. Because what you’re really buying is relief, relief from the harder thing.
The harder thing is building something worth talking about. The harder thing is asking one specific person for one specific thing and risking silence. The harder thing is following up properly, not the “great meeting you” message that dies in a thread, but the message that makes it easy for the other person to say yes or no. The harder thing is being useful in a way that costs you something, usually attention, time, and care.
An event lets you avoid all of that. You can float through the room, collect a few contacts, and leave with a clean conscience. The problem is your calendar starts to look like your strategy, and calendars are liars.
A real conversation has friction and specifics. It has a moment where someone says, “wait, how did you do that” or “that’s not how i think about it” or “can you show me”. A fake conversation stays impressive but empty. If you want to keep attending events, make them earn their place. Go only when you can name the outcome you want and the person most likely to help you get it. If you can’t name either, don’t go.
This isn’t anti-social advice. It’s pro-respect. Respect for your time, respect for other people’s attention, and respect for the fact that relationships compound only when there’s trust. Trust comes from repeated proof.
I’ve been thinking about this more because building Fursa has been a daily confrontation with the temptation of motion. As a solo founder it is ridiculously easy to hide inside “productive” activity: more conversations, more ideas, more partnerships, more talking. None of it matters if the core is not real.
For example in my case the core is simple. Are the jobs live? Are they current? Are they deduped? Do you click and end up on the real application page? Does it feel calm?
If you have a networking event on your calendar this week, try this. Before you go, write one sentence for yourself, not for LinkedIn, not for Instagram, for you: The neext week will be different because I went to this event, because ______.
If you can’t fill the blank without forcing it, skip the room. Use the time to ship something small that can be judged. It will feel more uncomfortable, and it will be more honest.
See you next week. And if you tried Fursa, thank you again. Monday gets real.
Best,
Kartik
I write Bold Efforts every week to think clearly about where work and life are actually headed, not where headlines say they are. If you want these essays in your inbox, you can subscribe here.