A friend of a friend of a friend. That's usually enough to reach almost anybody on earth — a famous person, an investor, the one expert you need. The world is much smaller than it looks.
The reason is simple. And it's also exactly what Sloan does for a living.
Your friends, your colleagues, your gym, your neighborhood. Tight. Comfortable. But to reach somebody outside, you'd have to walk a long chain of strangers. Most people stop walking.
One friend in another city. A former colleague who works in a different field. A person you met once at a conference. Each one is a shortcut — and just two or three of them are enough to put the entire world within reach.
In 1998, Duncan Watts and Steven Strogatz studied how people, neurons, power grids — basically anything connected — actually link up.
What they found was almost embarrassing in how simple it was: you don't need to know everyone to reach everyone. You just need a few friendships that cross the room. A handful is enough. That's why six handshakes can connect any two people on the planet.
The catch is that those few friendships have to be good ones — the kind where someone actually says "you should meet this person." Anything less and the chain breaks.
Below is a circle of people. Each dot is a person. The lines are friendships. One person hears a piece of news — and tells their friends, who tell their friends. Drag the sliders to add long-range friends and watch how much faster the news travels.
Each dot is a person. The lines are friendships. Press play and watch one piece of news spread through the group.
Now the news has to walk all the way around the circle, person by person. It takes forever — and most rounds it barely moves. This is the world without shortcuts.
Just a few long-range friends. The news still travels person-to-person, but every so often it leaps across to a totally different part of the room. Saturation drops by a huge amount.
Now everyone has friends everywhere. The news flies everywhere instantly. Fast — but messy, and impersonal. This is roughly what social media does.
You tell Sloan what you do, what you need, what you'd love to find. No form. Just a real conversation.
Sloan has the same conversation with hundreds of people in worlds you don't usually meet. Different cities, different industries, different rooms.
When somebody on the other side of the room is exactly who you need — or who needs you — Sloan recognizes it. That's the shortcut nobody else would have made.
Sloan writes to both sides with full context. The intro is warm, specific, useful. The world just got smaller for both of you.
Sloan is meeting a handful of people each week. Leave your email. We'll be in touch when we see a fit.